Projection Novel (Completed) - Chapter 27

Cheon Sejoo and Kwon Sejin had different ways of accepting each other. If Cheon Sejoo gave Sejin a spare room and allowed him into his space, Sejin filled his empty space with Cheon Sejoo.

Information he couldn’t help but know — what foods Sejoo liked, what he did when he was home, what clothes he wore often, how he folded his clothes when he took them off — steadily accumulated in Sejin’s mind.

However, all Sejin knew was Cheon Sejoo at home. From winter passing to spring arriving, Sejin didn’t know exactly what Cheon Sejoo did outside. He was curious about that blank space, but Sejin never asked first. Imagining himself asking to know more about him made him feel strangely pathetic.

But even so, he couldn’t stop his mouth from itching when he saw him like this. Sejin, who had gotten into the car and buckled his seatbelt, looked at his bandaged right hand. It hadn’t been there until the weekend, but this morning, he saw him wearing it. How did he get hurt? Since Cheon Sejoo was left-handed, it wouldn’t significantly impact his daily life, but driving seemed very uncomfortable for him.

“Let’s go.” 

“…Okay.”

Cheon Sejoo drove the car, unconcerned by Sejin’s steady gaze on his hand. It was late March, and they were on their way to meet Kim Hyunkyung for the first time in a month.

Cheon Sejoo had learned a few things while frequenting Hwa-gak for half a year. That Kim Hyunkyung was mentally stronger than he thought, and that she was only five years older than him. His initial thought that she was his peer was correct. Kim Hyunkyung had given birth to Sejin at seventeen.

“Mom.” 

“Son, you’re here?”

At first, the mother and son would cry every time they met, but now they were used to their meetings. Even after a month apart, their greeting was quite dry.

Last year, he had arranged for her to meet Sejin once a week, or at the latest, once every three weeks. However, recently, at Kim Hyunkyung’s request, they have reduced the frequency.

At Hwa-gak, there were a few others like Kim Hyunkyung who had come to repay their debts. Among them, one person, unlike herself who couldn’t even contact her family, became jealous and hostile towards Kim Hyunkyung for being able to meet her son, which led to a minor dispute internally. Because of this, Kim Hyunkyung worried and eventually suggested to Sejin that they meet only once a month. It was a decision she could make because she also knew that Kwon Sejin was under the reliable protection of Cheon Sejoo.

She had willingly chosen to meet her son, whom she could see every week, only once a month, and fortunately, the hostility towards her had reportedly softened. According to Han Jiwon, she now got along well with the other debtors.

“Have you eaten breakfast? Come in quickly.”

Kim Hyunkyung, who was peeling garlic in the dormitory kitchen with others, motioned to them. Cheon Sejoo, standing behind Sejin, gave her a slight nod in greeting and turned away.

When the two were together, he usually made himself scarce. Cheon Sejoo found the intimate and close atmosphere between parent and child very burdensome. He had never experienced it himself, so watching them made him feel strangely awkward.

On the other hand, a question arose: if Kim Hyunkyung, who gave birth at seventeen, raised Sejin so well, what circumstances led his own birth mother to leave him and Hyein at an orphanage? This made him unable to stay in that spot.

When Cheon Sejoo was young, there was a person who regularly volunteered at the orphanage. She wasn’t particularly warm to him, but she often stared at him, which made her memorable. Was that woman, who wore long dresses and tied her hair neatly, pretending to be proper but unable to hide the strong smell of cigarettes and alcohol, their birth mother? Cheon Sejoo often thought of her whenever he saw Kim Hyunkyung these days.

Anyway, it wasn’t important now. The end of his thoughts always drifted to the idea that just as Kim Hyunkyung, who cherished Sejin terribly, almost had to part with him due to unavoidable circumstances, his own mother must have had her reasons too.

Leaving the dormitory, Cheon Sejoo swallowed the bitterness and pulled out a cigarette. He sat on the stone wall, lit it, and called Seonhyuk, who had left a missed call.

“- Yes, Section Chief.”

“Oh. You called?” 

“- Yes. Are you busy?” 

“No, Hwa-gak. Why?”

To his indifferent question, Seonhyuk explained the situation. He said the Korean-Chinese knife-wielder they caught yesterday was acting up severely, and he thought Cheon Sejoo should come and see him. Cheon Sejoo frowned and looked down at his hand. The guy Seonhyuk mentioned was the very person who had plunged a pocket knife into the back of his right hand.

DG Group had successfully seized control of Seoul. The Chilryongpa, which had divided Seoul with the Daegam Gang in the 80s and 90s, had long since fallen after losing its leader at the hands of Chairman Shin Kyungjoo. For over 20 years since then, DG had dominated the underworld of Seoul and the greater metropolitan area.

The situation remained similar even after DG began to corporatize and meticulously hide its illicit businesses. While outwardly proclaiming itself as an innovative company, it secretly crushed emerging organizations like rats, preventing them from even attempting to grow in size.

What managed to slip through this gap and began to shake the metropolitan area’s underworld were the Korean-Chinese gangs from China. Establishing themselves in various Chinatowns and subtly expanding their influence, they pretended to have no connections with each other on the surface while forming the Korean-Chinese organization, Geomseongpa, within Korea.

By the time DG recognized their existence, it was already too late. Old executives of the Daegam Gang tried to eradicate them, but their firepower was insufficient to sweep away these groups, which were scattered like weeds throughout the metropolitan area. Although DG itself had grown in size due to corporatization, the number of so-called action leaders willing to risk their lives to fight for the organization had significantly decreased compared to before.

However, the Korean-Chinese gangs from China still adhered to the mindset of the 80s and 90s, grabbing knives and charging without a second thought whenever a fight broke out. Seok Yoonhyung, one of Chairman Shin Kyungjoo’s direct subordinates, had been leading physically capable men to fight fiercely to reduce their influence, but the results were sluggish.

The fighting continued for several years, and Chairman Shin Kyungjoo recently ordered Shin Kyo-yeon to find a solution for the Korean-Chinese problem. Accordingly, Cheon Sejoo and his team had been tracking Lee Hwanbae, presumed to be the leader of Geomseongpa, for several weeks. The day before yesterday, Seo Jinyoung, who had infiltrated Incheon’s Chinatown, obtained information that Kang Cheolmyeong, Lee Hwanbae’s right-hand man who had left for China, was secretly re-entering Korea. Cheon Sejoo, accompanied by Moon Seonhyuk, Seo Jinyoung, and Goo Haewoong, ambushed them near Incheon Port.

Cheon Sejoo, who was now engaged in a physical struggle with the Korean-Chinese thugs he had only heard about, was utterly exasperated. He had heard from Seok Yoonhyung that those guys fought to the death, but he hadn’t expected it to be this intense. The Korean-Chinese charged as if they were born to kill Cheon Sejoo, and in the chaos, Kang Cheolmyeong vanished without a trace. However, as they were finally subduing two of the remaining thugs and dragging them to the car, one of the knife-wielders attacked him with a pocket knife he had hidden in his mouth. Thanks to not letting his guard down, he only offered his palm to block it, but it was a moment where things could have gone terribly wrong.

Anyway, they immediately took the thugs to the workshop, caused a ruckus, and tied them up. Now, the news was that they had woken up and were going berserk, as if the sedatives had worn off.

“Don’t provoke them too much, just keep them quiet. I’ll be there this evening.” 

“- Yes, I’ll call you if anything happens.” 

“Okay.”

Hanging up the phone, Cheon Sejoo felt a headache coming on and sighed. Just thinking about the workshop made his head ache. As he rubbed his forehead with his left hand, holding the cigarette, a warm sensation suddenly spread through his right hand.

Looking down quietly, he saw blood spreading across his palm. It seemed his right hand wound had opened. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was a clean puncture wound that didn’t hit muscle or bone, so he had just sprayed some hemostatic agent and bandaged it. But it looked like it needed stitches.

Cheon Sejoo placed his bandaged right hand on the stone wall and pressed the wound with his left hand. It felt as if blood was gushing out, but there was no pain. Since Hyein’s death, Cheon Sejoo had been largely incapable of feeling much pain.

“Cheon Sejoo.”

While he was trying to stop the bleeding in a crude way, Sejin’s low voice reached him. Cheon Sejoo, who had somehow grown accustomed to Sejin calling his name, slowly turned his head towards the sound. Sejin was standing in front of the staff dormitory, holding a plate of kimchi pancakes. He stared at Cheon Sejoo’s blood-soaked right hand with a pale face.

“…Are you bleeding?” 

“A little.”

Cheon Sejoo shrugged in response to Sejin’s seemingly shocked voice. This was nothing. It just looked dramatic because of the blood; once the bandage was off, it was just a small puncture wound he wouldn’t even notice.

However, that was Cheon Sejoo’s perspective. Sejin approached him with a face as white as if he had seen someone’s wrist cut off. His delicate eyes twitched slightly. Sejin looked down at the blood-soaked hand and bit his lip. “A little,” he said. It was definitely not a little. The blood had soaked through all the bandages on his palm and flowed down the stone wall to the ground. Confirming this, Sejin looked up at Cheon Sejoo with an angry expression and said,

“How is this just a little bit of bleeding?” 

“The bleeding stopped. I’m fine. Give me the chopsticks. I’m hungry.”

As if Sejin’s concern was bothersome, Cheon Sejoo hid his raised right arm behind his back and spoke. Ignoring Sejin, who narrowed his eyes fiercely, he reached out for the kimchi pancake, but it was no use. Sejin sighed, glared at Cheon Sejoo, then turned around to get the plate and headed back into the dormitory. Cheon Sejoo, dumbfounded, shouted after him,

“Where are you going? Isn’t that mine?” 

“You need to go to the hospital! Wait. I’ll get dressed and come out.”

Sejin scolded Cheon Sejoo with a sharp voice. Cheon Sejoo knew that Sejin would glare at him as if he were a madman wanting to die every time he smoked, but he hadn’t expected him to react so strongly to such a minor injury. He stepped forward in embarrassment. Catching up to Sejin, he turned him around, showing his palm, and said,

“It’s nothing, I told you.”

However, Sejin seemed to get even angrier at his words and shouted,

“What do you mean ‘nothing’? There’s so much blood!” 

“…”

Surprised by Sejin’s outburst, Cheon Sejoo quietly shut his mouth. His cool eyes narrowed awkwardly.

He had been injured countless times since joining the organization. He had learned knife fighting from Seok Yoonhyung, Shin Kyungjoo’s action leader, and back then, they trained with real knives, so he bled almost daily and chewed on iron supplements. The scars all over his body were traces of those injuries, and even when he was cut over 2cm in the lower abdomen, Cheon Sejoo thought it was bearable.

Nowhere in Cheon Sejoo’s life was there anyone who got angry when he was injured. Cheon Sejoo and his team members had long since grown accustomed to such things, considering a puncture wound like this a minor abrasion that would heal with an antibiotic shot and a few days of medication.

So… Cheon Sejoo saw someone worrying about him simply because he had a minor hand injury for the first time in a very long time. He never expected to hear such words from Sejin, and as he stood there unable to respond, Sejin’s eyes welled up, and he shouted,

“Is it only a big deal to you if a finger is cut off? Did you even go to the hospital? Did you get treated?! If this is what treatment looks like, that doctor is a complete quack, you should go complain! If you didn’t get treated, go get it stitched up right now! Why are you so carefree? You’ll die like that!”

Whether angry or sad, when his emotions ran high, Sejin was a child who cried first. Cheon Sejoo was inwardly surprised by the sight of him shouting with tears welling in his eyes. It was because Sejin seemed upset.

Meanwhile, hearing Sejin’s voice, Kim Hyunkyung came out in slippers, and she too was aghast at the sight of Cheon Sejoo’s hand.

“Oh my, Section Chief!”

At her scream, the others who were peeling garlic also rushed out, thinking something terrible had happened. The front yard of the dormitory became bustling. Cheon Sejoo was instantly relegated to the status of a gravely ill patient in front of the fussing staff.

“Shouldn’t we call 911?” 

“Hey, there’s a first aid kit in the kitchen! Darling, hurry and get it!” 

“Where’s the manager? Someone call her!”

Cheon Sejoo stood silently amidst the people making a fuss around him. If it had been Moon Seonhyuk or the other guys, he would have shouted at them to get lost because they were noisy, but since they were all slender women, he couldn’t even raise his voice.

“No, really, I’m fine. The bleeding has stopped, and it just looks worse because of the bandage, but it’s not a serious injury…”

Finally, unable to bear it, he explained his condition in detail with an embarrassed expression. However, when Cheon Sejoo, genuinely thinking it was nothing serious, unwrapped the bandage to show them, the commotion around him intensified.

“No, how can you just leave this?!” 

“Why are men like this? My husband once came home with a dangling finger and boasted that a band-aid would fix it, and now the Section Chief is doing the same thing.”

It was a cleanly torn puncture wound. The flesh was slightly parted, revealing the inside, but there was no damage to bone or muscle, so it was clearly an injury that would heal in a few days. Yet… Cheon Sejoo couldn’t bring himself to insist he was fine again after hearing the “boasting” comment and hid his hand behind his back. Cold sweat trickled down. He felt like he had a fatal illness.

As they caused such a commotion in the yard, Han Jiwon, who had been contacted, soon approached with quick steps. In her hand was a large first aid kit from the kitchen.

“The Section Chief is hurt?”

When Han Jiwon appeared, her eyes wide with surprise, the staff made way for her. Cheon Sejoo was about to say it was nothing, but he couldn’t resist Sejin’s grip on his wrist and extended his hand to her.

“Here.”

Sejin tightly held Cheon Sejoo’s wrist and showed his hand to Han Jiwon. Confirming the blood-soaked, reddened palm and back of the hand, Han Jiwon frowned and shook her head. Though she seemed to have experienced similar situations often, she didn’t fuss like the others, but her gaze, looking at Cheon Sejoo with exasperation, was the same. She sighed briefly, shook her head, and then nagged him.

“How did this happen? You need to go to the hospital. You should get this stitched, how can you just leave it?” 

“Exactly!”

At Han Jiwon’s words, Kim Hyunkyung and the other staff members vehemently agreed. Amidst them, Sejin was looking at Cheon Sejoo with an expression that seemed to say, ‘See? I told you so! You need to go to the hospital, right?’ Seeing Sejin’s somehow triumphant expression, Cheon Sejoo felt deflated.

It was really nothing… but somehow, it felt like something truly bad would happen if he didn’t go to the hospital. A strange tingling sensation spread through him. It reminded him of his time at the orphanage. The boisterous days before his peers left with their parents…

In the end, Cheon Sejoo nodded, admitting he was a patient.

“Yes, I’ll go to the hospital right away. Thank you, everyone.” 

“Good. Sejin, hurry and get your clothes. No, wait a minute! Come in together. Section Chief, I fried some kimchi pancakes, took them and ate with Sejin.”

Kim Hyunkyung pushed Sejin into the dormitory, then seemed to change her mind and walked into the building herself. A moment later, when Sejin came out with his coat, he was also carrying a handful of items: the kimchi pancakes Kim Hyunkyung had packed, and even the garlic and chives the staff had been peeling together.

“Hurry and go! Listen to the Section Chief and be good!” 

“Go quickly, before the hospital closes.”

The front of the dormitory was bustling. Kim Hyunkyung, the staff, and Han Jiwon were all gathered to see Sejin and Cheon Sejoo off. Everyone had built up an internal familiarity with Cheon Sejoo from seeing him for six months, and perhaps this incident caused it to explode, as they all came out of the dormitory and waved as if seeing off their own son.

“…We’ll be going.”

Cheon Sejoo thought he would definitely send Sejin alone by taxi next time and greeted them. After that, he returned to the parking lot with Sejin and got into the car. Escaping the noisy area and being alone with Sejin in the car, the quiet was surprisingly welcome.