Chapter 28
“Please, Yeon-byeol…”
Yugyeom was pleading with me.
Calling out my name, tears dripping down, earnestly.
“Don’t abandon me too…”
His desperate gaze met mine through the car window.
My heart was pounding as if it would burst at any moment, yet I remained surprisingly calm.
I couldn’t be the one to hold his hand through that window.
Instead of embracing him emotionally, I firmly gripped the steering wheel and turned my head away. Yugyeom started pounding on the window with his fist.
“Open up.”
The door creaked.
The locked door handle’s creaking by his effort echoed in my mind, causing confusion.
Open up, Yeon-byeol. Please. Please. Yugyeom’s voice, pleading like a child clinging to hope, was overlaid on the creaking sound.
Emotionally, I wanted to open the door and embrace Yugyeom.
But that was as far as I could go.
Because I couldn’t tell him I loved him.
Because I didn’t love him.
Because I didn’t even have the courage to love him once.
Staying by his side would only lead to a bad ending.
I wasn’t the one who could make him happy.
“Yu Gyeom.”
As I lowered the window just enough for a finger to slip through, Yugyeom stopped pulling the door and looked down at me.
I gave up on smiling into his hopeful, teary eyes.
“You lost.”
As if the only light had been extinguished, his face fell into despair in an instant.
“You let me go.”
The door no longer creaked.
As I finished speaking, I turned my gaze forward. I couldn’t see Yugyeom’s face anymore, but just the thought of him made my chest ache, so I quickly drove away.
Even as I reversed, trying not to look back, Yugyeom was still in my sight.
With red under his eyes, Yugyeom stared at me with an inscrutable expression.
Somehow, dangerously—
Bang! Bang!
Gunshots echoed on the road. Several black vans were getting closer.
The thugs hanging onto the windows aimed their guns at my car and fired.
“Slow down and keep reversing.”
Baek Hawon loaded bullets into the gun he pulled out from the back seat, then climbed onto the sunroof, opening it.
The thugs hanging on the windows were brought down one by one by his shots.
Before I knew it, Baek Hawon had taken down all the shooters and now aimed for the driver’s seat, and there was no escaping his accuracy.
With the sound of tires screeching, the cars chasing us disappeared from view.
Frantically checking the rearview mirror, I saw Yugyeom’s car, with its crumpled bumper, rapidly catching up to us.
As Yugyeom got out of the car parked at the corner, holding a gun, he aimed it towards me as I desperately turned the steering wheel to change direction.
But Yugyeom didn’t care, adjusting the gun barrel as I moved.
“Boss!”
When Baek Hawon responded to my call and came down to the seat, it was the moment I was trying to increase the speed.
Gunshots rang out one after another, and the car shook violently and sank down.
Screech!
The car started losing control and sliding.
I gripped the steering wheel tightly, desperately trying to hit the brakes, but they didn’t respond.
The out-of-control car slid rapidly, spinning around in circles.
Baek Hawon reached out and pressed my trembling body against the backrest. I tightly gripped the steering wheel, closing my eyes tightly as the approaching utility pole loomed in front of me.
Crash!
The sliding car finally crashed into the utility pole with great force, coming to a stop.
Thanks to Baek Hawon’s support, there was no impact on my head, but my skull rang hollow, and my ears felt stuffed.
I couldn’t control my body as it swayed dizzily.
Wow. What’s going on?
If my body had listened to my mind in this extraordinary situation, I would have burst out laughing.
“Are you okay?”
Swallowing the taste of blood in my mouth, I managed to nod my head.
I had a strong intuition that wherever I woke up tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to get up.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
The alarm sounded oppressively.
As I slowly blinked my eyes, my blurry vision gradually became clearer.
Rubbing my throbbing head, I lifted my head.
“…”
At first, I thought it was a hallucination.
But the expressionless face directed at me soon made it clear that it was real.
Yugyeom was perched on the smoking hood of his car, looking at me with blurry eyes.
Tears were in his eyes, but they had a different gleam from when he was pleading.
Rather than the still red-stained area under his eyes, his light-colored irises seemed even redder, giving off a dangerous glint.
Lost in his appearance and just staring at him, Yugyeom raised the gun towards the car window. More precisely, towards Baek Hawon beside me.
And without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The car window bounced the bullet away.
Bang! Bang!
But Yugyeom fired more shots one after another with a nonchalant expression.
In the tense atmosphere surrounding him, it was difficult to breathe.
“Hah.”
Seeing him like that, Baek Hawon burst into laughter.
Despite knowing that the glass was shattering, Baek Hawon remained unfazed.
Instead, he aimed the gun at Yugyeom.
‘Are they both crazy?’
I was at a loss for words at their insane actions.
As the gunshots continued to ring out, my mind became fuzzy.
Finally, the glass began to crack. Blood trickled down Yugyeom’s pale cheek from the flying shards.
Why.
Why did it come to this?
The sight of the two of them looking at each other with eyes full of life seemed unrealistically distant.
“Yugyeom!”
As I called out his name desperately, Yugyeom’s eyes turned towards me.
“Are you crazy? You’ll end up dead too if you keep this up.”
I yelled with labored breath.
Wiping the blood flowing down his face with the back of his hand, Yugyeom tilted the corners of his mouth.
“I haven’t lost yet.”
His words sent me spiraling downward.
It felt like all of this was happening because of me.
So I couldn’t bear to see that glass shatter, even if it meant my death.
I unlocked the door and stepped out of the car.
Then, taking out the gun from my pocket, I pressed the barrel against my head.
“Yeonbyeol!”
Baek Hawon shouted as he followed me out. But my gaze remained fixed on Yugyeom, unwavering.
Yugyeom looked at me with a perplexed expression.
“Anyone who shoots will die right here.”
The gunshots ceased.
I continued to stare at Yugyeom intently as I slowly backed away.
The sound of waves crashing below echoed in my ears, making me dizzy. The moment we first met seemed to overlap with the present.
Suppressing the feeling of almost fainting, I opened my mouth.
“I just wanted to live, so I thought I’d mess with you a bit.”
“But why act so stubbornly. It’s no fun.”
I forced all my strength into lifting the corners of my eyes as I smiled broadly.
Yugyeom, who had been staring at me with a stern face, let out a hollow laugh and brushed his blood and sweat-soaked hair aside.
“I understand.”
“…”
“When you laugh as if you’re about to collapse, you take two steps back all of a sudden.”
Yugyeom got out of the car, and I started retreating backwards.
“So when I take three steps forward, you run away like this.”
My feeble lie didn’t convince him.
Yugyeom took a few more steps forward, and I hastily retreated.
I knew how to stop him.
Even though I knew, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
At that moment, the black cars that had been approaching at high speed surrounded us and came to a stop. Armed men poured out of the cars.
“Are you okay, Mr. Yugyeom?”
I locked eyes with Lee Chan, who stood at the forefront.
‘Does Yugyeom’s position need to be any more precarious? Should I add to it?’
‘I don’t understand why he’s acting like this. What’s he trying to achieve…? It’s the first time I’ve seen him show emotions like this.’
Echoes of our previous conversation resurfaced in my mind. Lee Chan turned his head away from me.
Soon, the armed men aimed their guns at me and Baek Hawon.
“Lower your guns.”
The command was issued firmly. The armed men looked confused and hesitated.
Only then could I speak.
“It’s over now.”
The words I never wanted to utter.
But they kept pouring out.
Because I couldn’t bear to see your whole life shaken because of me anymore.
“A child of a prostitute.”
As soon as I spat out those words and met Yugyeom’s face,
I felt it was truly over.
“Filthy.”
“…”
“That’s why I wanted to run away.”
Suppressing the pain that surged with each word I spoke,
Yugyeom’s face contorted and crumbled.
And unbearable, intense anger rose above his crumbling face.
It was a gaze I had never seen before.
Even when facing him in the pages of a book, I had never imagined such cold, icy eyes.
It felt like my heart would be pierced without even feeling the pain.
Tears streamed down from those ice-cold pupils.
“You should have said so sooner.”
Veins bulged in Yugyeom’s clenched fist.
With trembling hands, he aimed the gun at me.
“No, I’d rather…”
My voice choked with every word.
“You should have just kept lying to me.”
“…”
“If you had, I would have kept believing in you.”
The tear-stained barrel pointed at my heart.
At that moment, Baek Hawon aimed his gun at Yugyeom, and without hesitation, I snatched his gun and threw it into the sea.
Baek Hawon looked at me with widened eyes.
Bang!!
The most desperate gunshot echoed,
And the world came crashing down.
In the end, it was fate for you to die by your own hands.
