The goons laughed.
Then one of them lifted his foot and brought it straight down on the man's head.
The man's skull cracked against the pavement. Blood began seeping from his temple.
Geon-woo's eyes went red.
Woo-jin barely had time to grab his arm —
Geon-woo had already torn free and was running.
'To hell with holding back.'
Woo-jin stared at his empty hand for a second, sighed, and ran after him.
Joe stayed where he was, watching the two of them charge in. He frowned.
'...Unbelievable.'
He didn't follow. He just pulled his cap lower and leaned against the wall.
---
Geon-woo burst out of the alley with a flying kick aimed straight at Jae-myeong.
Jae-myeong didn't even have time to react. The kick connected perfectly, sending him flying backward. His body crashed against the wall, and he slid down, gasping for air.
Woo-jin was already on the goons. He threw a left jab at the nearest one. The goon raised his guard, but Woo-jin's next move was a body blow that slipped through his defense. The goon doubled over.
The second goon tried to circle around Woo-jin, but Geon-woo was there. A right hook sent the goon stumbling sideways. Geon-woo didn't let up. He followed with a left jab, then another right, driving the goon back.
Jae-myeong hauled himself off the ground, clutching his chest. He swept his gaze over Geon-woo and Woo-jin, voice rough with fury.
"What the hell?! Who the fuck are you people?!"
Nobody answered.
"Say something!"
Geon-woo glanced at him once, then charged in.
"Bastards!" Jae-myeong gritted his teeth. He also charged at Geon-woo with a wild punch.
Geon-woo slipped the punch and countered with an uppercut that caught Jae-myeong flush on the chin. Jae-myeong's head snapped back.
The first goon Woo-jin had hit was back on his feet. He threw a wild haymaker at Woo-jin's head. Woo-jin ducked under it and came up with a left uppercut that lifted the goon off his feet. The goon landed hard on his back.
The second goon tried to grab Geon-woo from behind. Geon-woo felt the hands and immediately threw an elbow backward, cracking it into the goon's face. The goon yelped and let go. Geon-woo spun around and finished him with a hard right cross. The goon dropped.
Jae-myeong was still in the fight. He came at Geon-woo again, this time with a combination. A left jab, then a right straight.
Geon-woo blocked the jab and slipped the straight. He grabbed Jae-myeong's wrist and twisted him around, pulling him into a knee strike. Jae-myeong twisted away, taking the knee on his hip instead of his gut. Still, it hurt.
"Come on, you son of a bitch!" Jae-myeong snarled, wiping blood from his mouth. "Come on!"
Woo-jin was making sure the first goon stayed down. A few more shots to the ribs, and the goon wasn't getting back up anytime soon.
Jae-myeong threw another punch at Geon-woo. Geon-woo caught it on his forearm and countered with a body shot. Jae-myeong grunted but didn't back down.
But the outcome was never in doubt.
Exhaustion was setting in for Jae-myeong. His punches were getting slower, sloppier.
Geon-woo saw his opening. He stepped in with a left jab, then a right hook that snapped Jae-myeong's head to the side. Before Jae-myeong could recover, Geon-woo threw a right uppercut that caught him under the chin.
Jae-myeong went down.
He tried to push himself back up, but he couldn't. His body wouldn't respond.
"Fuck this shit," he managed to gasp out. "Let's... let's go."
The goon Woo-jin had been working on was already crawling away toward the alley exit. "Yeah, yeah! Let's go!"
The other goon was already gone, limping away as fast as he could.
Jae-myeong rolled onto his side and started dragging himself toward the alley. "You bastards... I'll remember this..."
Geon-woo took a step to give chase. Woo-jin grabbed him by the arm and pointed at the old man on the ground.
The man was slumped against the wall, blood running down his face from his temple. His eyes were barely open.
"Bro, we need to call an ambulance," Geon-woo said.
"But if we do that—" Woo-jin frowned.
"This guy is dying." Geon-woo already had his phone out.
Geon-woo looked down at the old man. He bit down hard and said nothing more.
---
The subway station exit.
Jae-myeong and his two goons stumbled out into the open air, bent over, hands on their knees, gasping.
"Those little shits..." one of the goons wheezed. "Where the hell did they even come from?"
"Useless," the other goon spat between breaths. "Getting wrecked by two punks like that. Embarrassing as hell."
Jae-myeong didn't say anything. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, eyes dark.
"...Find them," he said quietly. "I want to know who those two are."
That's when Jae-myeong's gaze snagged on something.
A figure leaning against the wall near the exit. Cap pulled low. The darkness had nearly swallowed his silhouette whole.
Jae-myeong narrowed his eyes.
'That cap...'
The exact same one those two punks were wearing.
"Hey." He raised his voice. "You. Are you with those guys?"
The figure lifted his head from the shadow.
It was Joe.
Jae-myeong and the goons instinctively backed away. But they had nowhere to go.
Joe was getting closer.
His movements weren't particularly fast. The Parkinson's made his body a bit sluggish, awkward. But his presence was overwhelming.
The first goon threw a punch at Joe's face. Joe slipped it and countered with a straight right. The punch snapped the goon's head back. He staggered.
The second goon tried to rush Joe. Joe sidestepped and caught him with an elbow strike to the ribs. The goon wheezed and dropped.
Jae-myeong and the first goon came at Joe together. A left-right combination from Jae-myeong, a wild haymaker from the goon.
Joe weaved under the haymaker and caught Jae-myeong's right hand coming in. He twisted Jae-myeong's arm and drove an elbow toward his face. Jae-myeong twisted away, but Joe's elbow still grazed his cheek, drawing blood.
The first goon was back up. He threw another punch.
Joe turned and caught it on his raised knee. The goon shrieked and pulled his hand back, cradling it.
Joe stepped in with a left jab. The goon tried to block it, but Joe was already throwing a right hook over his guard. The hook connected with the goon's temple.
The goon's legs buckled. He hit the ground and didn't get back up.
Jae-myeong was still fighting. He came at Joe with a combination—left jab, right cross, left hook.
But then it happened.
Joe's body suddenly jerked. His movements became sluggish, disconnected.
The Parkinson's. A bad moment.
Jae-myeong saw his opening. He threw a right hook aimed at Joe's head.
Joe tried to slip it, but his body wouldn't respond fast enough.
The punch caught him right on the temple.
The world spun.
Joe went down hard, his vision blurring. His body shook uncontrollably. Pain exploded across his skull.
For a moment, there was nothing but pain and darkness.
Jae-myeong and the remaining goon pounced on him. They started kicking, stomping, cursing.
"Bastard!"
"Take this!"
"Get up so we can beat you down again!"
Joe's body was being battered, but his mind... his mind had gone somewhere else.
He was in a boxing ring.
The stands were full. Thousands of people. All of them were cheering. They were chanting his name.
"Joe Yabuki! Joe Yabuki!"
"The Messenger of Hell!"
The lights were bright. The roar of the crowd was deafening. And Joe was standing in the center of the ring, arms raised, basking in their adulation. He could feel the victory coursing through his veins. He could feel the love.
This was why he fought. This was everything.
But then, gradually, the cheers began to fade.
The lights dimmed.
One by one, people started leaving.
The stands emptied.
Until there was nothing left but silence and shadows.
Joe was still standing in the ring, but now... now he was alone.
No one was cheering. No one cared.
The ring that had felt like home now felt like a tomb.
'No,' Joe thought. 'No, I can't... I can't end like this.'
His eyes snapped open.
His body moved.
In one fluid motion, Joe pushed himself off the ground and came up swinging. A right hook caught Jae-myeong on the jaw. Jae-myeong's head snapped to the side, and he staggered backward.
The goon threw a wild punch. Joe sidestepped and drove a left uppercut deep into the goon's body. The goon's breath exploded out of him. Joe finished it with a right cross that sent the goon flying backward.
The goon crashed into a wall and slid down. He wasn't moving.
Jae-myeong tried to run.
But Joe was faster. Joe caught him by the collar and spun him around. A left jab. A right cross. Both found their target. Jae-myeong's face was a mask of pain.
'This... this can't be happening,' Jae-myeong thought, his vision swimming.
Joe threw an uppercut. It caught Jae-myeong right under the chin.
Jae-myeong's eyes rolled back. His body went limp.
Joe let him drop.
The other goon was starting to crawl away. Joe stepped on his back, pressing him into the ground. The goon cried out, but he didn't try to move again.
Joe stood there, breathing hard. His whole body was shaking—not from pain, but from the raw power coursing through him. For a moment, he felt alive again.
'This is me. This is Joe Yabuki.'
In the distance, he heard a siren. An ambulance was coming.
Joe looked at the three unconscious bodies, then looked at the approaching sound of the ambulance.
He had to move.
But looking at the beaten men, Joe made a decision. He bent down and grabbed Jae-myeong by the collar, dragging him toward the street. His body was weak. The Parkinson's had drained him. But he pushed through the exhaustion.
He dragged the second goon. Then the third.
---
The bookstore door swung open.
"Don't sit down." Hyeon-ju stood by the bookshelf with her arms crossed, expression tight. "This won't take long."
"You fought Yang Jae-myeong, didn't you?"
Woo-jin rubbed the back of his head. "We didn't really have a choice, so... yeah. We did."
"No choice, so that makes it fine?" Hyeon-ju's voice dropped a degree colder. "Then we can't work together anymore."
"What?" Woo-jin blinked.
"What's so surprising about that?" Her voice climbed. "Yang Jae-myeong saw your faces! My plan was to follow him quietly and build up evidence, but now that he knows someone's onto him, he's going to go to ground — and who knows how long for. You two just blew everything I've spent six months building."
"We had caps on, and masks," Woo-jin said. "He couldn't have gotten a clear look—"
"Oh! You had a cap on!" Hyeon-ju cut him off and pointed straight at his head. "So with that hair buried under a hat, you've got a perfect disguise, do you?! I could spot you from a mile away! Get out!"
Woo-jin opened his mouth. "We said we were sorry—"
"I said get out!"
"We didn't have a choice given the situation."
"What situation?"
"It's our first time working together," Woo-jin said. "You can't expect everything to go perfectly."
"That's exactly why I didn't want you in the first place!"
"We did what we thought was right."
"What situation justifies that?!"
"I already told you."
"Get out with that ridiculous hair! Are your ears broken?!"
"What does my hair have to do with any of this—"
"We'll go." Geon-woo's voice cut through the room, quieter and steadier than everything else. "We'll leave right now."
He took a step toward Hyeon-ju and looked at her directly.
"The hundred million President Choi gave us — I'll find a way to pay it back. But since Woo-jin and I just stood here and let you yell at us, I'm asking you to hear one thing."
Hyeon-ju didn't speak.
"If someone told you that you could make your work go smoothly, but only if you stood by and did nothing while a man died in front of you — could you do it?"
He paused.
"The boss of Smile Capital did this to my face. If I had done nothing while someone was dying right in front of me, what would that make me? How would I be any different from him? That would've been wrong."
"I just want you to think about that."
The bookstore went quiet.
Hyeon-ju's expression didn't change. But she didn't say anything either.
Then the keypad by the door beeped.
Everyone turned.
The door opened.
It was Joe.
Hyeon-ju's eyes narrowed. 'This bastard. He ran off and now he's back? If you were going to disappear, you should've just stayed gone.'
"Where'd you go?" Woo-jin asked.
"You were missing this whole time," Geon-woo added.
Joe didn't explain. He just tilted his head toward the door. "Follow me."
"Right now?" Woo-jin said.
"It's important."
Hyeon-ju didn't particularly want to move. But something in Joe's tone didn't leave room for argument.
In the end, all four of them followed him out.
Joe stopped in front of a car parked on the street and reached down to pop the trunk.
"Where'd you get this car?" Geon-woo asked.
Before Joe could answer, Woo-jin had already leaned over to look inside.
"Holy shit—!"
Geon-woo and Hyeon-ju crowded in beside him.
Lying in the trunk, packed neatly together, were three people. All unconscious. Not a single one of them moving.
Yang Jae-myeong. And his two goons.
Hyeon-ju stared at the three faces for a long moment and said nothing.
Joe spoke quietly. "You won't have to waste any more time investigating. Just ask him directly."