Chapter 6: At the Edge of the Cliff

If I said anything more to that annoying face, I would only get more entangled in his pace.
Chaewoo walked straight out of the lecture hall.

The moment he stepped outside, the tension broke and a heavy sigh escaped him.

But his insides were still churning with anxiety.

It was already hard enough to process that the family his uncle mentioned was Beom Euigeon’s, but to make matters worse, the man—who he thought would just ignore the incident—was actually making a move and acknowledging him.

His luck had been the absolute worst since yesterday.

He could keep insisting he was a Beta, but the shame and anxiety remained the same regardless.

Of all people, to be caught by Euigeon.

Of all people.

That fact made it even harder for Chaewoo to bear.

Chaewoo swallowed his irritation and checked the time.

Unfortunately, he didn’t even have time to wallow in these miserable sentiments.

He had to go to his part-time job soon.

He was going to end up missing dinner because he had lost so much time to the practice room schedule.

Even Kim Yunso, whom he was supposed to eat with, had already bolted.
His steps felt heavy.

****

Even while working, his mood didn’t recover.

Euigeon’s face and voice, as he smirked at him in the lecture hall, kept coming to mind.

Even though he tried to soothe himself by saying it would all be over if he just kept denying it, he felt as though he had handed a major weakness over to the man.

The thought that he had gone of his own volition to offer to bear the child of Beom Euigeon—the man who had everything Chaewoo wanted, who had taken over Chaewoo’s former spot, and who received everyone’s affection and envy—made a momentary error in judgment lead to such immense humiliation.

“Huh? Hyung, isn’t that your phone?”

Just as he finished his shift and was taking off his uniform, Jaeyeol pointed to the phone vibrating in the corner of the staff room.

Chaewoo, with his bag already on, picked up the device.
The word [Hospital] was displayed on the screen.

Chaewoo left the shop without even saying a proper goodbye and answered the call.

–”Hello.”

–”Is this the number for the son of patient Seol Jo-cheol?”

–”Yes, it is.”

–”The patient, Seol Jo-cheol, has collapsed.”
We need to move him to the emergency room for surgery immediately, but the nursing facility’s equipment is insufficient, so we are currently waiting to transfer him to another hospital.

–”What? My dad? What… how did this happen?”
Chaewoo, who had been walking rapidly, stopped dead in his tracks.

–”Can you come right now?”
An ambulance will arrive soon to transfer him.

–”Yes, yes. I’ll go now.”
W-where should I go?
My dad’s life isn’t in danger, right?

His mind went blank at the word ‘surgery.’

He couldn’t move for several moments, as if his feet were glued to the floor.

Chaewoo blinked rapidly, trying to focus on what the person on the other end was saying.

The signs and streetlights around him were emitting light so bright it felt like they were piercing his eyes.

The lighting felt so vivid that it actually made it harder to step forward.

After finishing the call, Chaewoo dialed his uncle with trembling hands.

However, it went straight to voicemail without a response.

“This is insane.”
He rushed out to the main road and hailed a taxi.

After telling the driver the hospital address, he thought of his bank balance.
Fortunately, he barely had enough to cover the fare.

At Chaewoo’s urging, the taxi sped down the road.

The city lights seeped deep into the car.

Countless remnants of colorful light swept over Chaewoo’s body before disappearing, over and over again.

Outside, the night had fallen dark, yet it was simultaneously bright with the lights the city vomited out.

Chaewoo stared at the urban landscape with anxious eyes.

He was frantic with worry that his father, who had already crossed several thresholds of death with previous brain surgeries, might not make it this time.

He still couldn’t reach his uncle.

If he arrived at the hospital alone and encountered his father after his heart had stopped, what was he supposed to do?

Or, if he were told that the surgery couldn’t proceed because there was no money, what could he possibly do for his dying father?

Unable to shake off the encroaching shadows of misfortune, Chaewoo closed his eyes tight.

****

“They said there’s no more visiting for today.”
His uncle, having finished the payment at the hospital’s reception center, walked toward Chaewoo with a smile.

“But the surgery went well, so that’s all that matters. You worked hard coming all this way at this hour.”

He spoke as if it were nothing, but his uncle’s face was bloodless.

When his uncle arrived after being contacted late, the surgery was already over.

Fortunately, things were sorted out faster than expected, the doctor had explained to Chaewoo while he was waiting in front of the operating room.

Seeing his sleeping father in the hospital room brought relief, but it also brought a wave of new worries.

He had signed the surgical consent form, but Chaewoo didn’t have the ability to cover those costs right now.

And hospital bills would only continue to increase from here.

Just as he was thinking about whether he should start a job doing heavy labor at a loading dock starting tomorrow, his uncle arrived.

After making several calls for a long time, his uncle had managed to borrow money to settle the surgery fee.

“Uncle. Where did you get that money?”

“What? You don’t need to know about things like that. Once you get back to Seoul, rest well and just focus on school.”

His uncle, with patchy stubble on his face, stroked Chaewoo’s head.

His hand was shaking minutely.

His uncle must have also been shocked by the news while working and rushed straight here.

“Should I just take a leave of absence and look after Dad? While working part-time?”

“Don’t talk such nonsense. If your father wakes up and finds out, he’ll be furious.”

“Then what are we supposed to do? We have debts and even the hospital bills are overdue.”

If he followed his heart, he wanted to quit university today and start working full-time.

But as his uncle said, his father wouldn’t stand for it.

He took immense pride in the fact that Chaewoo was a music student at the most prestigious university in Korea.

If Chaewoo quit school to nurse him, he would likely chase Chaewoo out of the hospital room himself.

And in truth, Chaewoo also wanted to finish school properly.

Though he had been attending half-heartedly for the past year due to various issues, vocal performance was still something precious he couldn’t bring himself to discard.

“Don’t worry about that and keep your grades up, kid. For now, let’s head back to Seoul. Get in the car; we’ll go together.”

Leaving the hospital, his uncle walked with large strides toward the parking lot.
Chaewoo followed weakly behind him.

The two of them shared ordinary conversation during the drive back to Seoul, as if nothing had happened.

However, the act of pretending to be composed didn’t last long.
At some point, both Chaewoo and his uncle fell silent, killing time by listening to the radio.

“Ah. I had to leave while I was in the middle of working, so I need to stop by the worksite for a second. Can you wait in the parking lot for about five minutes? Then I’ll take you to your place.”

His uncle spoke as if he had just remembered, seeing the traffic light change.

Normally, Chaewoo would have asked to be dropped off at a nearby subway station to go home on his own, but right now, he didn’t have the confidence to walk properly.

Chaewoo simply nodded in silence.

The place where his uncle drove the truck was a construction site near an apartment complex.

After parking the truck in a small vacant lot nearby, his uncle said he’d be right back, turned off the engine, and stepped outside.

Chaewoo leaned his back against the hard seat with his eyes closed.
Having experienced such extreme emotional fluctuations today, sleep began to pour over him.

“Seol In-cheol. Where do you think you’re scurrying off to without paying your debts?”

However, a gruff voice echoing in the lot made his eyes snap open automatically.

Chaewoo stared out the window with a startled face.

In the lot, where a single streetlight flickered precariously, three large men were approaching his uncle.

“…Do I have to report to you every time I step away? Why are you here so suddenly…?”

“Oh? Look at this bastard. You’ve skipped out on payments for three months, and you’ve got the nerve to talk back?”

“Not here… let’s go s-somewhere else to talk.”

“S-somewhere else? Where would we go? Haha, my god. Go where? Are we your underlings? Huh?”

“The boss was way too kind to him, so it looks like his liver has grown outside his body.”

“I didn’t mean it like that… I told you I’d give you the money by next week.”

“We came because we thought you were doing a midnight run. But they said you disappeared like a rat in the middle of the night.”

“It wasn’t a midnight run; I just had to go somewhere because of a situation.”

“I know guys like you too well to believe that kind of crap.”

The three men closed in on his uncle menacingly, as if tightening a net.
His uncle backed away until he reached the truck.
Sensing the situation was turning dangerous, Chaewoo grabbed the handle to open the truck door.

“I was wrong. There’s no way I’m running away, so please just trust me and wait until next week. I’ll get the principal amount somehow, and the interest… even if it’s hard to do all at once, I’ll pay it to the very end. Please?”

But his uncle, sensing him, was pressing his back firmly against the truck door.

Since the door wouldn’t open, Chaewoo gripped his phone, agonizing.

Should he call the police right now?

But even if he reported it, would his uncle be safe afterward?

“Hey, take his phone and look through it. I need to see where he’s been.”

“Yes, boss!”

“I wasn’t trying to run away. Really. S-something just came up so I had to go… I’ll have the principal by the deadline no matter what happens!”

“In-cheol, you better keep that promise. If you can’t prepare the money, you better eat well and take your supplements. Your organs need to be healthy for us to sell them for a high price. If you can’t pay even after we take out everything inside you, huh? You’ll just pass the debt right onto your poor family. Got it?”

Organs?
Chaewoo, who was about to dial 112, froze completely.

He knew his uncle had borrowed money from various places, but he never dreamed such dangerous people were coming after him.

His hands began to shake uncontrollably.

After that, his memories became a blur.

There was a ringing in his ears, and a growing sense of dissociation as if his consciousness was separating from reality.

His uncle on his knees, the men kicking his uncle’s chest and thighs, a single orange streetlight barely hanging onto the darkness… only those fragments came to mind.

After saying they would give him a few more days, the men left, and his uncle muttered incoherently, saying things like ‘Thank you,’ ‘I appreciate it,’ ‘Thank you so much,’ while trembling.

On the way dropping Chaewoo off at his studio apartment, his uncle only repeated that it was nothing.

No sound registered in Chaewoo’s ears.

Unless he was a fool, he couldn’t help but know exactly how far his uncle had been pushed to the edge.

When Chaewoo didn’t say a single word, silence eventually piled up in the truck.

As soon as they arrived in front of the apartment, he opened the door and bolted out as if escaping.

His uncle hadn’t mentioned the Reset Partner because he was momentarily tempted by a lucrative offer.

It was because there was simply no other way out.

“And I had the nerve to get angry at him. You idiot.”
Chaewoo berated himself.

He already knew how much his uncle was sacrificing.

Bursting into the tears he had been holding back since they left the lot, Chaewoo immediately turned on his laptop.

He began searching for ‘Reset Partner.’

With damp, red eyes, he spent the entire night reading through every site and post that appeared on the main page.