The Revolving Door

‘Who was I expecting to lean on…….’

Scowling at her own pathetic display, Harin shoved her phone back into her pocket. Everything unfolding right now was, in the end, hers to bear alone.

She rose slowly from her seat and walked toward the bank her eyes had kept drifting to. The place was quiet; the moment she pulled a number ticket, she was called to a teller's window.

"I'd like to discuss a loan, please."

The teller took her ID and the stack of hospital bills, tapped away at his monitor, and then pulled a face that said he had nothing good to deliver.

"Your current maximum limit is around twenty million won. That should cover this surgery and the testing fees, at least."

He turned his tablet screen toward her.

Twenty million won.

Her mind went white. Her head, which had been nodding along with careful calm, slowly sank.

"Let me…… think it over a little more. Thank you."

That was all Harin could manage before she stood up from the desk. She'd believed that at least talking to someone would give her a plan. Instead, the numbers had only tangled themselves tighter in her skull.

Suppose the twenty million covered the surgery and the tests for now. But the hospital room, the nursing care, the medication, their living expenses—she had no idea where the money for any of it would come from tomorrow. However hard she turned it over, her thinking kept sliding toward one place.

Third-tier lenders. Loan sharks.

She didn't want to fall that far. Not there.

"Ha."

A hollow, helpless laugh—born from having nothing left below her to fall.

How long can Grandma hold on? If I even knew when she'd pass, would the math get a little easier?

The instant that thought reached its end, a chill ran down her spine.

"I've lost my mind."

Her lips trembled as she whispered. So this was how a person warped, backed into a dead end. Harin found herself strange and frightening—someone she no longer recognized.

Leaving the bank, she caught sight of Hayul reflected in the glass of the convenience store across the street. He was lifting an enormous tangle of jjapagetti noodles and slurping them down with obvious relish, jjajang sauce smeared around his mouth, his small shoulders bouncing happily.

Somehow, Hayul—knowing nothing—struck her as unfair to resent. Being hounded by money was twisting her thoughts out of shape. As if to shake herself free of it, Harin shook her head and headed for the restroom down in the lobby.

And then, without meaning to, her eyes landed on the hospital's main entrance. The revolving door turned slowly, lazily, riding the breeze. Beyond it, the world looked improbably bright and serene.

If she just stepped over that threshold, she would be no one's guardian, responsible for no one. That suffocating weight on her chest might finally loosen.

What if I just threw it all away and ran.

She tried to sever the thought, but once an impulse had passed through you, it didn't dissolve so easily. The bright sunlight made her eyes sting. Harin's feet carried her one step, then another, toward the glass doors.

Just as her hand reached for the handle of the revolving door—

Thump.

A stubborn little force clamped around her wrist.

Startled, Harin flinched and looked back.

It was Hayul.

The boy had both hands stretched out, gripping her wrist with all his might. Those small hands held on so fiercely that Harin couldn't help but stop in her tracks.

There was no telling how long he'd been following her. His mouth still glistened with grease, his gaze wavered with anxiety, and his wide eyes shimmered wet with unshed tears.

"Nu, Noona…… are—are you hungry?"

He squeezed the words out in a voice barely above a crawl. But Harin could tell that wasn't what he really wanted to ask.

Hayul clutched her wrist tighter when she didn't answer. Terrified that his noona would vanish. Terrified of being left behind alone. All of that fear poured out, unfiltered, through those small, fernlike fingers.

Only then did Harin see, with brutal clarity, what she had been about to do.

The tension drained from her rigid body. Her vision rippled, and the tears she'd been holding back burst loose at last. They slid down her cheeks and dropped, one after another, from her chin.

"……Hayul-ah."

Her voice cracked and leaked out between her lips, ugly and unsteady. The selfishness and irresponsibility that had swallowed her whole only moments ago collapsed entirely at the touch of one small hand.

Harin sank down where she stood and pulled Hayul into her arms. He clung to her in return, hugging her hard, without a sound.

She felt her shoulder grow damp as Hayul wept silently into it.

She was so sorry. Everything happening now terrified her. She didn't think she could hold on alone anymore.

And at the very end of that thought, a face she had been trying so hard to keep at a distance flickered past.

Yoon Lee-gang. She needed his help.

In a pawnshop near the Gohyeon City Casino Resort, Noh Tae-shik sat alone in the office, tapping at his laptop with a bored expression. Beyond the wide-open window, the beep of a forklift reversing echoed out of the pawnshop warehouse, tangled with the coarse voices of the workmen. But to Tae-shik, hunched over his spreadsheets, none of that noise registered as stimulation.

The pawnshop, the bar, the game arcade, the buildings, the maintenance of the fight arena—there was far too much to keep track of, and his nerves were fraying because of it. Squinting at numbers no bigger than mouse droppings, he couldn't help feeling bitter about his lot in life.

"That bastard boss. If he had a shred of conscience, he'd give me a raise."

Tae-shik muttered it and pulled off his glasses to scrub a hand down his dry face.

Just then, the office door burst open without so much as a knock. Lee-gang strolled in at an unhurried clip.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, my ass. It's past noon."

Unmoved by the jab, Lee-gang dropped onto the sofa.

"A guest shows up and you don't even bring him tea?"

"Since when are you a guest? You're the boss."

"You're the boss here, hyung."

As if he couldn't be bothered with the nagging, Lee-gang sank deeper into the cushions and flicked at his ear.

"Since when does a paper president count as equal to the real one? Want coffee?"

Tae-shik asked on his way to the pantry.

"No. Green tea."

"Last time it was 'I want an americano,' so I went out and got you takeaway—and now you're on a green tea kick? What gives?"

Lee-gang crossed his legs and swayed lazily.

"Just curious, that's all. Whether you're doing a good job."

He glanced at the clock on the wall. By now, Harin should have finished her café shift and moved on to the barbecue restaurant.

Tae-shik set a bottle of Boseong green tea in front of Lee-gang and returned to his desk. Lee-gang cracked it open and swallowed the bitter tea. His gaze drifted blankly at the empty air, but his thoughts had gone somewhere else entirely.

Harin. Jang Harin.

Her face from the night he'd said you want me, don't you—sleep with me once was still vivid. That rigid, guarded expression, and beneath the hard shell, the way she'd shown just a sliver of something soft underneath, half revealing, half concealing—it kept nagging at him.

You clearly wanted it, though.

She'd said she hated it, yet she hadn't pulled away when he kissed her—hadn't pushed him off, but hadn't yielded either. He found it funny. Funny that he was the one clinging to a woman playing hard to get, too.

He hadn't cared for the kid who'd popped up out of nowhere, either, just as things were heating up. Jang Hayul, was it? The boy who gave off the same scent as her and stuck to her like glue. Some jealousy-adjacent thing had risen in him, pointlessly.

Lee-gang took out his phone and checked the screen.

He'd given her his number. No contact yet.

He felt pathetic for checking every single time the screen lit up. Had he actually been hoping? Because all she did was rebuff him, he couldn't shake this pointless irritation.

Rolling the phone playfully between his fingers, Lee-gang suddenly thought: then again, maybe I should count it as a good thing.

When he'd asked whether she'd set foot in an illegal fight ring, she'd refused flatly. Anyone who wasn't a fool would know how dangerous that circuit was. At the time, with no pretext to keep her at his side, he'd been disappointed—but seeing the state the arena had fallen into, he felt oddly relieved now.

The night before, after dropping Harin at home, Lee-gang had walked the grounds himself. A few of the gyms under Ryu Seo-in's management, all the way back to the arena's holding rooms. And in every one of them, 1cc syringes lay carelessly discarded in toilets and cabinets.

Steroids, presumably.

It had Ryu Seo-in's fingerprints all over it. The problem was that once steroids came through the door, there was no telling what came next. A fighter could be ruined in the blink of an eye.

Mold, once it started to bloom, spread fast if you didn't catch it early. An unwanted shoot was best cut away the moment it appeared.

So how should I have these bastards dealt with…….

Just then, the phone he'd been fidgeting with rang. It was the Gym Director.