PHUW 111

Haeri remained in a constant daze.

Various drugs, including tranquilizers, lifted the fog a little. Even after recognizing that the white figures were doctors and the blue figures were nurses, he could not leave the bed and groaned in pain. He could not sleep properly, yet he was not fully awake either. Even while he was forced into drugged sleep, he repeatedly jumped awake at the sensation of falling. His head throbbed as if it would split, and his limbs burned and ached as though they had been spun raw inside a dryer. The pain was unbearable.

But what truly tormented Haeri was not the physical pain.

Every time he closed his eyes, the moment Lee Sangjin died replayed. Dragged by strangers who grabbed him by the collar, he shouted for them to call the police, then lost his balance and flailed as he fell. Along with a hideous splattering sound, the gruesome scene unfolded vividly. He remembered the face beside him, retching over a sink of swollen, overcooked ramen after they had once watched a third-rate slasher film that had famously used over a hundred liters of pig’s blood, the two of them gagging at the sight. That face now appeared half crushed, staring at him with resentment.

“Ugh!”

Unable to endure it, Haeri always flinched. Blinking against the fluorescent green in his vision, he steadied his breath. When he tried to sit up, the nurse came over. She was the ward’s dedicated nurse, stationed in the room at all times to observe Haeri’s every move, even when nothing particular was happening.

“Mr. Haeri. Another nightmare? Do you want some water?”

Her professionally measured kindness calmed his racing heart quickly. He drank a cup of lukewarm water and exhaled a long sigh. The nurse stroked his back like a kind older sister.

“You missed mealtime. You were sleeping soundly so I didn’t wake you. Aren’t you hungry? Should I bring it now?”

“In a little while.”

“Alright. Tell me when you’re hungry.”

The nurse was very kind. And she was not a caregiver but a hospital-employed nurse. They said this kind of medical service was rare even in VIP rooms. At first, he thought it was simply her personality or professional ethics that made her so kind, but he later learned this was already his third hospitalization, and she had cared for him each time. Before, they had been close enough that he called her noona, so she told him not to feel awkward, but he remembered none of it.

More surprising than this being his third hospitalization was the fact that all his medical expenses were being paid entirely by Vice Chairman Jeong Mok of the Hyeonsan Group.

How could an orphan who had dropped out of high school have come to know someone like that? A senior-level doctor came and explained in detail the reasons for his previous two hospitalizations and his current condition. When the doctor mentioned symptoms of memory loss, Haeri was greatly shocked.

Then a lawyer named Shin Chaehee and a man referred to as Chief Ahn came and explained how he had been living and what was happening now. Haeri nearly fainted when he heard he was living together with Jeong Mok.

“Me? Didn’t you say he is the vice chairman of Hyeonsan?”

He knew what Hyeonsan was. A giant conglomerate that constantly appeared in the news. And he was told he lived with the chairwoman’s nephew, the current vice chairman? Why? For what reason?

Even if one wanted to take responsibility as the perpetrator of the first accident, providing for him was another matter. Yet it was not just financial support, they had lived in the same house.

As he sat there unable to understand any of it, Attorney Shin Chaehee said nothing. Instead, Chief Ahn gave a faint, troubled smile. In that moment, Haeri’s back stiffened and his hair bristled.

Shit. That bastard was one of them too. An orphan with no memory would have been easy to exploit.

He had lived as a penniless stray with no home or family, seeing all sorts of filth and cruelty, but the worst of all were the perverts who lusted after men.

At first, they approached kindly, pretending to want a brotherly or sisterly friendship. Once they grew close and shared a drink, they revealed their true nature. Sometimes, even when they were not drunk, they pretended to be and tried to grope or rub against him in secret.

When they learned he was from an orphanage, they became even more blatant. Sometimes they assaulted him first, then tried to pin the blame on him. The most revolting part was that the perpetrators were not only women. The ones who pushed Ahn Haeri to dangerous extremes were mostly men.

Because of that, Haeri never worked in entertainment bars no matter how much money they offered. Not that other jobs were easy. At convenience stores, the owner, the owner’s friends, or even customers harassed him. It was the same in factories.

Dog Sangjin clicked his tongue at Haeri, saying he was cursed with a doomed fate. He warned that living this way, Haeri would end up in something unspeakable, and told him to save money and get a threatening tattoo across his face. If he had the money, he would have done it already.

Haeri only wanted to work, but whether it was customers, the boss, or other employees, they always came at him in some way, so he could never settle into his job. Money was always tight. He had managed to endure thanks to Lee Sangjin, but when Sangjin got a girlfriend, even that became difficult. But through the fitting model part-time work Sangjin introduced to him, he could scrape by.

Sangjin was not just a friend. He was a brother. Why did someone like Sangjin have to die? Sangjin had a sly, easygoing nature, knew how to fit in anywhere, and was skilled at getting along. He was more likely to be liked than hated. It made no sense that someone like him had to die that way.

The reason came through Chief Ahn, who visited him in the hospital.

He showed Haeri a few photographs. All were men with vicious expressions, clearly taken with a telephoto lens. Haeri recognized three of them. One was the man who had grabbed Sangjin by the collar, the other two were the ones who had chased him.

“This man grabbed Sangjin by the collar?”

“Yes.”

“His name is Cha Iltaek, department manager at Hongil Trading. Have you heard of it?”

“That’s Sangjin’s company.”

Why would someone from Sangjin’s company kill him? And what kind of company chased people with sashimi knives?

“They must have thought Sangjin was smuggling goods out of the company.”

It was not that they only thought so. He really had smuggled things. That was how the two of them lived. But he could not admit that here. He denied it flatly.

“Sangjin wasn’t like that. Just because we’re orphans doesn’t mean we all steal. People make mistakes themselves and then frame others. And just because someone smuggles some goods, does that mean you can just kill him like that?”

His voice rose with anger. Chief Ahn was not even a manager at Hongil Trading. But for Sangjin, who had died such an unfair and sudden death, and because they had always shared responsibility for everything they did together, Haeri was terrified his own life might be next.

“Your body isn’t in good shape, calm yourself. And it wasn’t quite a murder, but a fall, so… perhaps closer to an unfortunate accident.”

“He fell while trying to dodge someone grabbing and shaking his collar, how is that not murder? Just because I’m an orphan, you treat me like this… He died unfairly, and now you’re saying he deserved it?”

Tears dropped down his cheeks. His left eye wept for his poor friend, his right eye for himself, who had to bear this situation alone.

“I’m not saying it was Lee Sangjin’s fault. I meant that’s how they see it. This is troublesome.”

“But what kind of lunatics kill a man just to get back some goods? Huh? Their own employee, too. This isn’t an accident, this is murder. I saw it clearly with my own eyes!”

“Alright, I understand. Please, calm down.”

While Chief Ahn tried to soothe him with an awkward expression, the nurse, who had briefly stepped out, came back in. Haeri kept shedding bitter tears, and the conversation ended there.

The next day, Chief Ahn returned with Attorney Shin Chaehee. Shin Chaehee asked Haeri in detail about what he had gone through that day and recorded his answers. She said she planned to request a reinvestigation into Sangjin’s death.

When Shin Chaehee finished her work, Chief Ahn, who had waited silently by her side, spoke again.

“Mr. Ahn Haeri, you probably didn’t know, but Hongil Trading isn’t just a normal company. Outwardly it looks like a regular trading firm, but in fact it’s a front for smuggling all kinds of goods. Of course, I don’t think Lee Sangjin was an accomplice. Since it’s a cover, there are plenty of employees who just work normally. Lee Sangjin was likely one of them. My guess is that Lee Sangjin unknowingly took out company property and got caught up in a tragedy.”

“And?”

Haeri asked stiffly.

“Do you know anything about it, Mr. Ahn Haeri? If we could find that property, it might help in several ways.”

The nuance of his words was odd.

Sangjin had already suspected long ago that Hongil Trading was engaged in illegal smuggling. If Sangjin knew, then Haeri knew as well. Since Haeri did not know the details, Sangjin probably had not figured out exactly what they were smuggling either.

What Sangjin did was, if there was an order error and too much stock came in, or items that had been delivered and then left piled up in a corner of the warehouse and forgotten, he would secretly take them and resell them secondhand. He had never once been caught. Most of those goods were cheap Chinese trinkets. Whether one box was missing or not hardly mattered.

What Sangjin had his eye on right before he died was a set of cheap manicure kits. He said he wanted to use them as a subscriber giveaway for his girlfriend’s nail-related channel. The shipment volume was large enough that a small shortage would not even be noticeable.