Chapter 5: At The Edge

“Ah, damn.
You woke up?
You should’ve just stayed unconscious.
You’re going to go through hell anyway.”

“…..”

“Don’t feel too wronged about it.
That’s just how life goes for people.
I’ll at least make sure it doesn’t hurt when you die.
That much, I promise.”

“How would you know whether it’ll hurt or not?”

“Hey, it’s just a figure of speech.
Do you have to jinx it like that, hyung?”

The conversation they shared in front of someone they were about to kill was as casual as deciding what to eat for dinner.
Listening to it all, Seon-kyung weakly closed his eyes.

He scraped together his dry saliva and swallowed with effort.
He had to force his lips open, even though they refused to move.

“Please…
can’t you spare me?”

“Hm?”

“I’ll… pay you more than what you were given.
I won’t report this to the police.
Please… just let me go.”

His pleading lips trembled uncontrollably.
The man in the cap, watching him, let out a snickering, meaningless laugh instead of answering.

The only visible part of his face—the eyes beneath the cap and mask—curved thinly.
Apparently amused that Seon-kyung was shaking this badly yet still not crying, he looked down at him and spoke.

“Mr. Woo Seon-kyung, I think you’re mistaken about something.
There’s such a thing as trust in this line of work too, you know?
A job comes first.
We don’t flip sides just because someone offers more money.
We have our own code.”

“…..”

There was no hope left in that statement.
The face that sensed the end was filled with despair.

“Enough talking.
Let’s get started already.
At this rate, it’ll be dawn.”

“Yes, sir.”

Prodded by the colleague keeping watch outside, the man in the cap stretched and loosened his stiff shoulders.
He rotated his arms widely, let out a small grunt, then lifted himself and sat squarely on Seon-kyung’s abdomen.

He pinned Seon-kyung’s struggling body down firmly with his thighs, adjusting into a position that made it easy to apply force.

With gloved hands, he clasped Seon-kyung’s throat as if crossing them over his Adam’s apple.
The neck wrapped in his palms was barely a handful.
White and slender, it looked like it would snap with even a little pressure.

He pressed down lightly.
Struggling for air, Seon-kyung clawed at the back of the man’s hand.
Blood rushed to his small face, turning it red.

“Think of it as bad luck.
If you’re that resentful, leave a dying message or something.
Anything you want to say?”

His mouth moved.
He was saying something, but the sound was too faint to make out.

Unable to contain his curiosity, the man bent down.
He focused on the whisper, quieter than breathing.

“Huh?
What did you say?
…Pregnant?
Wait—hyung, he says he’s pregnant.”

“What the hell are you talking about?
I never heard anything like that.
f*ck, if that were true, we’d have charged more!
That’s two people!”

“Are you kidding me?
I can’t do this.
You do it, hyung.
You know I don’t kill pregnant people or kids.”

“Stop bullshitting and finish it already.
How do we even know if that’s real?
We don’t have time!”

“That’s exactly why you should do it, hyung!”

The man who had been about to choke him moments ago brushed off his hands and stood up, insisting he couldn’t do it.
He was too busy arguing with the man he called hyung, trying to confirm the facts.

Gaining freedom in an instant, Seon-kyung staggered backward, gasping for air.
Bright red handprints were already forming around his neck.
Bracing himself on the floor, he quickly scanned his surroundings.

The messy construction site was pitch-black, not a single ray of light coming in.
It was so poorly built and unfinished that he couldn’t even tell where the exits were or what the structure looked like.

Even so, he couldn’t afford to stand there dazed.
Thinking now or never, he kicked off the ground and sprang up.
He ran without looking back.

“Hah…
hah, ngh!”

His knees trembled like aspen leaves from sheer tension.
Each time he ran, the loose plywood flooring thundered beneath his feet, as if announcing exactly where he was fleeing.

Bolts, screws, and rusted nails scattered across the floor stabbed into his bare feet, but he didn’t even feel the pain as he ran blindly.

As time passed, the footsteps that had been charging forward slowed little by little.
Seon-kyung collapsed, gulping down ragged breaths.

It was hopeless.
The place was twisted like a maze, and he couldn’t find any way down.

Even watching Woo Seon-kyung flee, the hitmen didn’t panic.
They followed him at an unhurried pace, still arguing over who should do it.

There was only one exit anyway.
The path Seon-kyung ran along inevitably led to a dead end.
The outer wall was open, so it wasn’t technically blocked—but jumping from the sixth floor wasn’t exactly an option either.

Sure enough, at the far edge of the wall they leisurely caught up to Woo Seon-kyung, who stood frozen in despair.
Clutching the gaping concrete opening, his face was deathly pale as he stared down.

A knife-like wind blew from all sides.
The man in the cap shivered, apparently hating the cold, and gestured with his hand.

“Brr, my ears are freezing!
Mr. Woo Seon-kyung, come over here.
Hyung said he’ll do it.”

“…..”

“I said come here already.
If you don’t listen, it’s going to get ugly.
Our hyung has a real shitty temper.”

When the threat still didn’t work, the hitmen approached.
He stepped backward, but there was nowhere left to retreat.

Standing right up against the railing that reached his calves, Woo Seon-kyung looked down at the dizzying ground below once more.

There was no other choice.
This really was the end.

The moment he made up his mind, strength flowed back into his trembling legs like a lie.
Woo Seon-kyung turned his head straight ahead.
The fierce wind whipped his jet-black hair in all directions.

“Who ordered it?”

“Huh?”

“Who told you to kill me?”

Caught off guard by the sudden firmness in his voice, the hitmen exchanged strange looks.
The man called hyung stepped forward in long strides and stopped right in front of him.

“You think I’m crazy enough to tell you that?”

“You can at least grant me one last wish.
If I die like this, I don’t think I’ll even be able to close my eyes from how wronged I feel.”

Displeasure flickered in the man’s cold gaze.
Revealing a client to the target was unthinkable in their line of work.
He had never made exceptions—under any circumstances.

But for some reason, Woo Seon-kyung being pregnant stirred a faint sense of pity in him.

If both him and the child in his belly were crossing the threshold of the underworld together, wasn’t it okay to tell him that much?

The man lifted his head and met Woo Seon-kyung’s gaze.
The damn omega had been staring straight at him this whole time.

“…..”

Yeah.
Maybe it was that angelically noble face that was pricking his conscience.
He was starting to feel guilt he didn’t even have before.

“…You know who it is, right?”

In the end, the hitman spoke.
Hearing the name, Seon-kyung fell silent in disbelief for a moment, then let out a hollow laugh.

“So it was him.”

On his pallid face, emptiness and detachment mingled together.
Seon-kyung swallowed the saliva pooled in his mouth.

Blood slowly seeped from his split inner lip.
It felt like the wound he’d gotten because of Han Ji-seok had torn open again.

Along with the dull pain, Han Ji-seok—his alpha—felt unbearably distant and painfully missed.

He stepped backward.
Placing his foot on the narrow railing barely a handspan wide, he climbed up onto it.

The instant a hitman sensed his sudden movement and reached out to grab his arm, Woo Seon-kyung leapt ahead of them—over the outer wall.

“You f*cking bastard!”

“Hyung!
What do we do?!”

Panicked, the hitmen rushed to the railing and looked down.

Between the darkness and the height, they couldn’t see clearly.
Whether Woo Seon-kyung was alive or dead could only be confirmed by going down themselves.

But as if things couldn’t get worse, flashing police lights spread in the distance.
Somehow, the police had found the location faster than expected.

At least three kilometers away.
Close enough to arrive any moment.

In the end, prioritizing their own safety, the hitmen abandoned the scene without confirming Woo Seon-kyung’s fate.

Having crashed to the ground below, Seon-kyung lay there, gasping for breath.
Still on his back, he stared up at the sky.
Rain was falling again, cold droplets splashing onto his face as if urging him to stay conscious.

It felt like his entire body had been shattered.
Even as his mind drifted, waves of horrific pain crashed over him one after another.

He felt the ground growing damp beneath the back of his neck.

Warm blood spread until it reached where his hand lay.
It was unbearably cold and painful—so much so that he almost wished he would just die already.

But faintly, somewhere far away, the sound of a siren reached Seon-kyung’s ears.
It wasn’t his imagination.
The sirens grew clearer, mingling with the noise of multiple car tires.

Relief washed over him, and his strength drained away.
His head lolled weakly to the side.

His right hand no longer moved.
He barely managed to lift his left arm, which didn’t feel like his own.
His trembling fingers traced over his flat abdomen.

‘I’m sorry…
I couldn’t protect you to the very end.’

Han Ji-seok, thinking the child had been erased, might feel betrayed when he learned the truth later.

‘Hyung…
but I really did my best.’

He slowly closed his eyes.
Of all things, the last image that surfaced was Han Ji-seok’s cold face.

The tears that had pooled slipped down his cheeks.
Seon-kyung opened his eyes again, his body convulsing as he dragged in shallow breaths.

If he could just hold on a little longer.
He was so exhausted—so tired.

They said that when death draws near, moments from your past flash by like a panorama.
As if it were a lie, fragments of memories surfaced before his dimming eyes.

Among them was the moment he first met Han Ji-seok.

There had been times when they were crazed with the belief that they couldn’t live without each other.

How had things ended up like this?
Of all memories, the last image of him was the most bitter.

Tears slid down along the damp tracks on his cheeks.
His slowly blinking eyelids froze halfway open, then stopped moving altogether.
Seon-kyung’s pupils, wet and unfocused, lost their light, darkening to the same color as the sky.

Not long after, ambulances and police cars arrived one after another, people spilling out.
The blood-soaked ground was a complete mire.

The rain only grew heavier.