The air in Seoul had a smell.
It was like wet smoke coming out of cars and the smell of old concrete buildings.
Jin-Ho knew it well. After all, he walked through it every night.
That morning was no different, just another Tuesday for him. Fourteen hours at the warehouse had done its usual damage. His back felt like someone had replaced his spine with a bent metal rod, and his legs moved purely out of habit. His hands, rough and permanently stained with shipping-label ink, stayed buried in his jacket pockets as he dragged himself home.
Home, in his case, meant a moldy one-room apartment that smelled faintly of damp walls and instant ramen. Yes, it wasn't much, but it was at least rent-free.
And since his grandfather died, Jin-Ho had basically faded out of existence in that damn home.
The old man had been the only one who ever gave a damn about him. The only family he had left in this world. But cancer doesn't care if the person is good or bad.
When it happened, all Jin-Ho could do was just watch as his grandpa died slowly and painfully right in front of him.
It was a very cruel thing to see, not just for his grandpa, but also for him. And all that was left of that old man's legacy was the hospital bills and the moldy apartment that Jin-Ho inherited.
Since then, his life ran on a simple loop: work, sleep, and repeat. The minimum wage he got barely covered his food costs after paying off the debts.
Oh, and let's not forget the loneliness.
There were days when it felt so heavy on him, staying alone in that moldy apartment; it sat on his chest like an actual weight over time.
--
"Just one more year," he muttered as he was walking home that day, his breath puffing white in the cold. "One more year of this garbage, and I'm free."
Free to do what exactly? He had no clue.
But it sounded hopeful enough for him to keep walking home after that day's bone-breaking work, just to get that month's pay without delay.
And then out of nowhere, he heard someone scream.
The sound came from a narrow alley squeezed between two decaying office buildings. It was very sharp and panicked.
Jin-Ho stopped walking.
He stood there and thought about what he should do. He really, really didn't want to get involved in some kind of trouble. After the hard work all night, all he wanted was just to lie down on his bed and get a good day's sleep.
'Not my problem', the tired part of his brain said. 'Plus that scream feels like trouble. And trouble is the last thing I need right now. Yeah, right!' He started to convince himself really hard not to follow the source of that sound.
He took half a step forward.
But then out of nowhere his grandfather's voice popped into his head, uninvited and annoying as ever.
"Being a good man isn't about counting up every good deed you've done, Jin-ho," the old man used to say.
"It's about what you choose to do when someone needs help, especially when you're at your absolute lowest, or standing at your highest."
Suddenly recalling that sentence from his old man, Jin-Ho sighed, with frustration deep in his bones.
"Aghhh… That fucking old man… doesn't even let me do as I please even when he's gone," he muttered to himself, as he scrambled his hair with one hand.
----
He turned into the alley, trying to follow the sound of that scream.
And that's where he saw them. Three guys and one girl.
The source of that screaming earlier, the girl, was pressed against the brick wall, her eyes wide and unfocused like a deer that is about to get hit by a truck. One of the guys had her arms pinned up. And another was already pulling duct tape from his pocket, possibly to shut that girl's mouth.
And that was it.
That was all it took for something to finally snap in Jin-Ho's mind.
It wasn't bravery. It wasn't hero instincts.
It was pure rage.
Pure, ugly anger, from seeing men age his fathers, trying to bind an unarmed girl, with the intention of doing god knows what to her.
Jin-Ho usually hated crime in general. Seeing them on TV from a young age, as his grandpa always played them on when he left the house to work, having no way to change the channel, made him sick of it.
But among all the crimes that he hated, there was one particular thing that boiled his blood when it aired on TV.
It was this.
Seeing men treat women like objects. Doing horrible things to them, just for their own pleasure.
This kind of thing always used to hit a nerve of his. He hated people like this. Always had been. Men who treated women like objects felt like nothing more than animals to him.
Of course, there was a special reason for this hatred for this.
But let's not get too much into those things today.
Today we have to talk about what type of things Jin-ho felt like doing to those men, seeing the scene unfold right in front of him.
And seeing the very thing that he hated very much happening right in front of him made his blood boil.
Suddenly, with no plan, no weapon, he just charged.
The sound he made was barely human as he slammed into the nearest guy.
He didn't throw a clean punch. He was just a tired, broke guy throwing two hundred pounds of sheer exhaustion and rage into the side of an unsuspecting neck. The man hit the wet asphalt with a dull thud, his breath escaping him in a wet gasp.
Before the second guy could react, Jin-Ho swung wildly, trying to get the better of them with this surprise attack. His knuckles, scabbed from years of warehouse labor, cracked hard against the guy's nose. A sickening crunch echoed down the narrow alley, sending him stumbling back, clutching his bloody face.
"Owww…. You fucking bastard!"
The third guy, the one pinning the girl, seeing all of this happen in a matter of seconds, panicked. In a flash of cold steel, he snapped open a switchblade. Before Jin-Ho could even process the blade, the guy yanked the girl in front of him, locking his arm tight around her neck and pressing the sharp edge directly against her throat.
"Don't move! I swear to God, I'll cut her! If you take one more step forward, I'll cut her throat, Right here!" the guy screamed, his hands shaking.
The girl gasped for air, tears cutting clear tracks through the grime on her face, as she was now on the blade point. Her terrified eyes locked onto Jin-Ho, begging for help.
Seeing the situation didn't turn out the way he hoped it would, Jin-Ho froze, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.
'Not good, not good. Now what? This is really bad. What do I do now?! What do I do?' He was now panicking, seeing no other options in front of him.
Every instinct screamed at him that he was out of his depth. After all, he really was just a warehouse worker. He had no weapon, no training, and his body was already screaming from a fourteen-hour shift. But looking at the blade pressed against her skin, he knew one thing: if he backed away now, something bad, really bad, would happen to her.
And as long as he lives, he won't let that happen.
"Hey," Jin-Ho rasped, raising his bloody hands, taking a tiny step forward. "Look at me. Let her go. I'll look the other way this time. I won't call the cops; no one will be behind you, I swear. Just let the girl go, and all of this goes away. What do you say, huh? Just..."
He didn't finish the sentence. Well, to be more accurate, he couldn't.
Just as he was talking, suddenly the girl did a foolish thing. She bit the guy's hand, making the guy who was holding her hostage scream out in pain.
And in that split of a second, Jin-Ho also lunged forward. He didn't think; his body just moved. He grabbed the guy's bloody knife wrist with both hands, throwing his entire body weight into shoving the girl out of the way.
The girl stumbled free, crashing onto the wet concrete.
"Get out of here!" Jin-Ho yelled, but the words caught in his throat.
In the blur of the struggle, the guy panicked. He ripped his arm free, took the knife in his good hand, and violently plunged the knife forward.
THUD
A strange, dull sensation hit Jin-Ho's stomach. It didn't even hurt at first; it just felt like a heavy, cold punch, a strangely sharp punch.
Jin-Ho blinked. He looked down. And what he saw was that the guy had buried the entire blade deep into his abdomen, hot blood pouring out of him.
Seeing what he had done, the attacker just gasped, and with shock he also pulled the knife back out.
Suddenly, cold air hit the open wound, and right after that came the heat. A sickening, fiery agony burst through Jin-Ho's gut, stealing every drop of air from his lungs. His legs felt like they turned to jelly, as he collapsed hard onto the filthy pavement.
"Holy shit, man! You stabbed him! You fucking stabbed him!" one of the other guys yelled in a panic.
"Let's go! Run!" Another suggested.
-
Scrambling in fear, the hurried footsteps of the three men faded rapidly into the main street, leaving the alley in deadly silence.
Jin-Ho lay on his side in the puddle, clutching his stomach.
Warm blood was pouring past his fingers, mixing with the freezing air. He couldn't move. He couldn't even catch his breath.
"Sir! Oh my god, what just happened?! Oh god, sir!"
The girl was crawling toward him, her hands trembling violently as she tried to press down on his wound. "Stay with me! Sir! Please! Someone call an ambulance! Please!" She screamed to get someone, even though there was nobody in this area at this hour.
Her frantic voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. Jin-Ho tried to tell her to run home, to tell her it was okay, even though he knew it in his heart that this was far from Okay.
But he still tried to tell her that. But all that came out of his mouth was a wet choke, blood tasting bitter on his tongue.
Slowly, his head fell back against the wet concrete.
He stopped looking at the girl. He stopped feeling the icy air hitting his face.
He just stared up at the narrow gap between the two decaying office buildings, at the empty, pitch-black night sky of Seoul.
'Agh... That fucking old man…' Jin-Ho thought, a faint, bitter smile trying to form on his lips. 'I knew he was full of shit. I told him... that I wasn't built to be a hero…fuck…'
The noise of the city began to fade, as the piercing cold in his stomach slowly turned into a strange, numb warmth. His vision blurred, dark spots swallowing the sky until there was nothing left.
And just like that, Jin-Ho's long, exhausting day finally came to an end.
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