The Price of Need
"Yes."
Lee-gang answered the call as though it were nothing.
— Ah, Boss Yoon. It's, well, you know how I asked you to let me know if anything happened with Harin.
"Yes, I remember."
The corners of Lee-gang's mouth stiffened almost imperceptibly.
— She didn't show up for her shift today. Her grandmother's taken a real turn, apparently. Her voice… the kid didn't look well at all.
Lee-gang's eyes sank deep.
"Understood."
After relaying a few more details of the situation and hanging up, he stared down at his phone screen in silence for a long while.
Tae-shik stole a sideways glance at his profile. White shirt, black suit trousers — immaculate, without a single wrinkle, he sat perfectly still.
Even though he'd personally swept through several sites last night over the steroid problem, there wasn't a trace of fatigue on him.
Ruthless bastard.
No coffee, no alcohol, no cigarettes. That a gangster could live like such an upstanding young man was something Tae-shik, after years at his side, still found profoundly strange.
It had been the same back at Handong Enterprises. The guy refused to be a burden to anyone, insisting on handling everything himself. Even when it was the boss's reckless order, he'd walk out alone, single-handedly, and see it through to the end.
That was why, when Lee-gang left Handong and asked Tae-shik to help him, Tae-shik hadn't had a moment's hesitation. He'd followed him out without thinking twice. Something told him that if no one stayed close, this fool was going to get himself killed one day.
The organization they'd built from scratch had been growing by the day, and things had finally settled — but lately, every time Lee-gang wore that expression, it left Tae-shik deeply unsettled.
What the hell is wrong with him.
Those dim, vacant eyes made it seem like someone ought to grab him by the shoulders and shake him awake.
Was it because of Ryu Seo-in? Or had the athletes' steroid use put him on edge?
Tae-shik cleared his throat pointlessly, breaking the silence.
"Boss Yoon."
Lee-gang flicked his gaze over.
"What."
"You know there are athletes under BEX Holdings' management running around with Ryu Seo-in's crowd, right?"
Only then did Lee-gang seem to come back to himself, a glint of sharpness returning to his eyes.
Yangji — the legitimate side. The place where the officially sanctioned athletes under BEX Holdings' direct management and sponsorship competed. All they had to do was keep their noses clean and devote themselves to training. Why would they choose to hobnob with Ryu Seo-in, a man running money through illegal doping, and step into the shadow world…?
"What are you going to do about them? If our Chairman Yoon finds out, he'll have an absolute fit."
Tae-shik sighed anxiously as he spoke.
Lee-gang ground his back teeth. Several of the people active on the legitimate side had ties to him through their high school alumni network.
Just then, his phone rang.
The name on the screen.
It was Harin.
His eyes wavered.
Only after the phone had buzzed two or three times did he draw a breath and answer.
When he said nothing for a long moment, her voice — damp, waterlogged — drifted through the receiver.
— Yoon Lee-gang, right?
Lee-gang answered with a laugh he didn't quite feel.
"Calling me all on your own. Never saw that coming."
— …
"Cat got your tongue? Need time to think it over?"
— …Can you come to Gohyeon University Hospital right now?
At the word hospital, the smile Lee-gang had been forcing onto his lips died, and his mouth closed hard.
— I want to talk to you face to face.
He had a vague sense of what she meant to say. Holding the phone to his ear, he said nothing for a beat.
"…All right. I'll come."
He exhaled shortly and ended the call.
Lee-gang rose from his seat at once. Behind him, Tae-shik started to say something about what to do with the steroid operation, but Lee-gang brushed it off with silence.
The doping athletes, Ryu Seo-in and his ilk — they could all be beaten to a bloody pulp any day of the week. None of that mattered right now.
Harin's trembling voice, thick with tears, lingered in his ears far longer than he expected.
Harin set down her phone after gazing quietly at Ha-yul, fast asleep on the folding cot tucked into the corner of the hospital room.
He'd gotten up before dawn and trailed at her heels all day long. No wonder he was exhausted.
The room was quiet.
Only the steady mechanical beep of the monitor connected to her grandmother and the soft hiss of vapor escaping the oxygen respirator filled the space with a faint chill. As if to prove that, for now, her grandmother was still alive.
Harin perched on the edge of the folding cot and sank into a blank reverie.
She'd actually called him. Now that it was done, she felt dazed.
Yoon Lee-gang, or Loan Shark No. 3 — in the end, wasn't it all the same devil?
Still… if it has to be Yoon Lee-gang, maybe he'll go a little easy on me.
Whenever she'd been wary, pushing him away — and yet here she was, seeking him out all the same.
— Calling me all on your own. Never saw that coming.
— Cat got your tongue? Need time to think it over?
His words kept circling in her head.
Time to think? Think about what? Whether to fight as a fighter in his illegal pit — or to sleep with him once?
Did he think she'd already made up her mind between the two before she dialed?
"Ha, honestly…"
A laugh leaked out of her, air whistling through a broken seal.
Whatever his intentions were, what could she possibly do about it now? And how much dignity could she really claim, a woman planning to borrow money by dangling the desperate desire of a man who was dying to get her into bed?
Harin looked back and forth between Ha-yul, sleeping soundly, and her grandmother, motionless in the hospital bed.
Her hands were shaking.
Before she stepped into the world where dirty money moved, she needed time to steel herself.
Gazing down at the sleeping Ha-yul, Harin repeated it to herself like a vow.
There was nowhere left to run.
A few minutes passed like that. Then the phone she'd set down beside her buzzed, and the folding cot beneath her hummed with it. A messenger notification.
Harin bit her lip.
The underground parking garage sat low and heavy under dim fluorescent light.
It was the middle of a bright day, the hospital still open for business, so the cars were plentiful — but hardly anyone was moving among them.
Harin stepped off the elevator, and the moment she crossed the automatic doors into the garage, her eyes met someone's, naturally, as if it had been arranged.
Yoon Lee-gang stood beside a black sedan.
Back against the car, hands in his pockets, leaning at a careless slant — the lines of his face stood out sharply under the lights.
As she approached, his gaze lifted slowly toward her.
"Doesn't seem like the kind of thing we should talk about standing up. Get in."
Apparently expecting the conversation to run long, Lee-gang moved to open the rear door — but Harin took a step back and refused.
"No. I have to get back up there soon. I left Ha-yul alone in the room."
She didn't want to step into his private space. She was afraid that at the crucial moment she'd lose her composure, disgrace herself, cling to him, fall apart.
Lee-gang stared at her, expressionless. He was struck by the fist clenched white-knuckled around her sleeve, and by the face of a woman who looked ready to crawl out of her skin just being here.
When Harin stayed silent for a long while, his brow rose, slow and unhurried.
"You call a man out here and then what?"
At a single sentence, Harin's shoulders slumped helplessly. Something about the sight didn't suit her at all, and he didn't like it.
"…My grandmother had surgery for a ruptured aneurysm, and I'm struggling to cover the hospital bills."
Lee-gang looked down quietly at her as she laid out her grandmother's situation — and her own — with forced calm.
"I need money."
"…"
"So — I'll fight in your pit. As one of your fighters. I'm asking for your sponsorship. That's why I called you out."
As he watched her pause to draw one steadying breath before speaking, the images of last night flickered through Lee-gang's mind.
The syringes of steroids piled to bursting, the deranged eyes of athletes drunk on the stuff…
Now was a terrible time for her to be entering this world. Should he have cleaned house first, before she ever opened her mouth? The regret came late, crowding in on him.
"If I fight, I can actually make money, right?"
She asked it carefully, brow furrowed, raking her hair into a mess.
A short laugh escaped Lee-gang.
The whole board was a disaster — and in the middle of it, he'd found some way to tie himself to her. The fact that a little color was rising in his own face over that… he really had gone insane.
"How does payment work, exactly? I know it's shameless, but could I manage weekly?"
She was curious about the sponsorship terms, but Lee-gang found he didn't want to answer.
When he said nothing, Harin edged a step closer, her face tight with urgency.
Lee-gang let out a hollow laugh like a sigh and stepped back.
"You said you didn't want to."
At his words, Harin clutched the hem of her jacket without a word. He could see exactly how hard her fingers were digging in.
His gaze, which had dropped for a moment, landed on that clenched fist — then fell away.
Her desperation was his opportunity, and the fact that he intended to exploit it made him garbage…
Since when did I ever care about that?
He'd been living a garbage life since the day he was born. Was there any reason to hesitate now, agonizing over something as useless as a conscience?