The iron door opened with a heavy sound. My uncle's shouting, which had been raging at the top of his lungs, cut off abruptly. From beyond the corridor swallowed in darkness, I could hear several people’s footsteps. Between the steady, unhurried sounds of dress shoes, combat boots scraped against the floor.
Men in black suits entered the warehouse first. Behind them, a middle-aged man with streaks of white in his hair appeared. Expensive-looking shoes stepped onto the damp floor. Light from the faint ceiling lamp glinted off the toes of his shoes. The man glanced around the warehouse once, then stopped in front of my uncle.
“Chairman.”
My uncle’s face lit up in an instant.
“Just as you said, I brought them all. That woman too, and the traitor. So now untie this for me.”
The chairman didn’t answer. He looked down at my uncle’s crooked glasses, then held out a hand to the man beside him. The man drew a gun from his waist and handed it over.
Click. The sound of the safety being released rang out with unusual clarity. The smile vanished from my uncle’s face. Before his trembling mouth could even open, the chairman’s low voice rang out.
“There’s nothing left for you to do now. You’re noisy….”
Bang— then the gunshot echoed through the warehouse. My uncle’s body toppled sideways along with the chair. My aunt, awakened too late, let out a scream like it was being torn apart. Soon after, she collapsed back to the floor. She must have fainted. The blood spreading across the floor mixed with the shallow puddle of water. It was my first time seeing someone die in front of me. I couldn’t even swallow, let alone raise my head. My field of vision could go no higher, so all I could see was the chairman’s waist. He gave the gun in his hand a light shake.
“How long are you planning to keep pretending to sleep?”
A relaxed, low laugh spread through the room. Someone walked up beside the man called the chairman. Soon, a hiss sounded. This smell—stronger than cigarettes. It was the smell of a cigar. The chairman handed the gun to his subordinate, then lit the cigar.
To my left, on the floor by the sunken wall, Woojin’s fingers moved faintly. A moment later, his closed eyes slowly opened, and he pushed himself up against the wall. Congealed blood had clumped with his black hair and stuck to his forehead.
The men around the chairman all raised their guns at once. Several barrels pointed at Woojin, but he didn’t even blink.
“I thought so. You were fine.”
“You got hit in the head twice. Do I look fine?”
“You’re still talking, so I guess it wasn’t that bad.”
The chairman rubbed out the cigar against the hand of the man beside him. In the midst of the shocking situation, with the dizzying smell of cigar smoke and the stench of blood in the air, I could barely keep myself together. If you enter a tiger’s den, you can survive as long as you stay sharp. If they didn’t kill him at first meeting, then there had to be some way out.
One of the men dragged over a small table and set it down in the middle of the warehouse. On it sat a silver 2G phone. It seemed they had taken the one from my pocket. The chairman tapped the phone with his fingertips.
“I hear it’s password-protected.”
I looked at Woojin reflexively. There was no change in his expression.
“Unlock it.”
“I don’t know.”
“You were pretty close to that guy, weren’t you.”
As if he didn’t care about Woojin’s answer at all, the chairman took back the gun he’d set aside earlier from his subordinate. Then he strode right up to Woojin. He held out the gun in his hand, grip first.
“You’re useful. Too useful to throw away.”
Woojin silently looked down at the gun. The chairman was smiling, but his eyes had been sharp from the very beginning. For an instant, killing intent flashed across them.
“Prove your loyalty by killing that woman. Then I’ll overlook the ones you’ve been smuggling out.”
The warehouse fell silent enough that you could hear a breath. Maybe it was natural, since the only one talking from the start had been that chairman. Droplets falling from the ceiling tapped against the floor. The damp air tickled my throat.
Woojin’s gaze, fixed on the gun, met mine. His face was cold and indifferent. It was no different from when we first faced each other at our house. Just like back then, when he pointed a gun at me and told me to hand over the safe key. And yet, a strange sense of trust welled up in me. A belief that he wouldn’t kill me.
Woojin took the gun from the chairman’s hand. The men standing around slowly lowered their barrels a little. Instead of aiming straight at me, he went to the table and picked up the phone lying on it. When he pressed the power button, a lock screen appeared on the small display. Woojin’s finger moved over the number buttons. The motion was without the slightest hesitation. Tap, tap—he fiddled with the phone several times like that. Before long, a short tone sounded, signaling that it had been unlocked. I stared at Woojin, eyes wide.
“How did you….”
It wasn’t my dad’s birthday, nor mine, nor my mom’s. That man knew a number I didn’t. Ignoring the fear right in front of me, I lifted my head and looked at Woojin. Still looking down at the phone screen, Woojin said,
“The day I came back to life.”
“But Mom’s memorial day is….”
“It’s not what you thought it was.”
Woojin looked down at me. Then he gave a small smile.
“If we live, I’ll tell you.”
Was that meant to mean he’d kill me? No, it meant he’d let me live. He was saying he’d tell me once we got out of here. He must have deliberately phrased it ambiguously.
But even without hearing it, I could guess. There was a long stretch when I didn’t see my dad or mom. Then when he came back, my dad was alone. When I was only in elementary school, I had worn black mourning clothes without understanding a thing and attended my mother’s funeral. Only now did it feel like the tangled questions I’d had as a child were finally being unraveled. I could tell without even asking what my dad had been doing during that long period he didn’t come home, or who he’d been searching for.
It wasn’t hard to realize that the memorial day I’d known for my mother had been wrong from the very beginning.
The chairman brightened at the unlocked phone. He looked as if he was thinking, This really is useful. Looking satisfied, he put another cigar in his mouth.
“Bring it here.”
Woojin looked at the chairman with a cold face, then started pressing the phone buttons a few more times. After that, he handed the phone back to the chairman just like that. What on earth was he thinking?
The chairman took the cigar in his left hand and the phone in his right. As he looked down at the screen with a relaxed expression, the space between his brows tightened sharply.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The chairman’s face twisted. Still not understanding, I raised my head and looked back and forth between the chairman and Woojin. Even after unlocking the password and handing it over, that expression still wasn’t satisfied. I had a feeling something was teetering on the edge. Woojin lifted his chin, looked the chairman straight in the eye, and spoke.
“There’s nothing you’re looking for.”
At that moment, the gun in Woojin’s hand moved, and a gunshot rang out.
The chairman’s body lurched violently. Even through the thick three-piece suit, red blood spread over it. The chairman, staring at Woojin in disbelief, buckled at the knees and collapsed to the floor.
I still couldn’t make sense of what was happening, when gunfire suddenly exploded from all directions. At the thunderous sound, I turned my head. Though I was away from Woojin, I felt like I was about to get shot and my whole body shook uncontrollably.
Woojin, a few steps away, grabbed the falling chairman’s body and held it up like a shield. Bullets kept burying themselves in the chairman’s back. With his body lowered, Woojin shot the nearest man in the leg. As the man screamed and fell, he immediately snatched his gun.
The smell of gunpowder filled the damp warehouse. Every time bullets struck the wall and floor, concrete dust scattered everywhere.
I shook the chair with my whole body and twisted my wrists. I had to tip over somehow. If not, I might get hit by a stray bullet and die. The rough rope scraped my skin. It hurt more the more I moved, but I couldn’t stop.
I put in one more burst of strength and tilted the chair to the side. Losing its balance, the chair soon dropped my body to the floor. As I fell, my shoulder hit hard.
“Ghk….”
I clenched my teeth and rolled my body. A cold stone edge brushed my fingertips. Feeling around for the small, crumbly stones in my hand, I soon picked out one that was sharp and fit in one hand. I shoved it through the rope binding my wrists and scraped the rope with its sharp end. My insides burned under the nonstop gunfire. I scraped the back of my hand on the stone edge as well, and blood came out. When my hand was finally free, I crouched low to the floor and moved toward my unconscious aunt and cousin. Thankfully, they seemed safe since they were far from the shooting. If it came to it, I could just use the aunt who betrayed us as a shield.
Meanwhile, Woojin hid behind a pillar and fired rapidly. The men in black fell one by one to the floor. When every suited man in sight had been laid out on the ground, I could finally let out a breath of relief. He’s a monster too. At that moment, from the side of the pillar outside Woojin’s blind spot, one man pointed a gun at him.
“Woojin!”
At my shout, Woojin turned his head.
A gunshot rang out, and Woojin’s body was shoved to one side. Red blood spread along his waist, but he didn’t fall. Woojin immediately turned and shot the man. When the last man dropped to the floor, only silence remained.
A sharp ringing echoed in my ears, made sensitive by the gunfire. Only the flickering ceiling light was faintly visible through the gunpowder smoke. Woojin walked up to the fallen chairman. Blood kept seeping through the fingers pressing his side. Sweat was slick across his forehead.
The chairman was still stubbornly breathing. Damn him. Was this what it took to be a boss? Breathing hard through blood-mixed breath, he looked up at Woojin and spoke.
“You… can’t survive outside.”
Woojin looked down at the chairman for a moment. The chairman seemed to die without even being able to close his eyes. Woojin didn’t say anything, whether because he didn’t think the words were worth answering or because he had too much on his mind.
After checking the area, I got up and spoke to the back of his head. It was, in its own way, comfort—and my way of saying thanks.
“You held out all this time just to say that? Tough guy.”
Woojin gave a snort of laughter. His hand spasmed and he let go of the gun he’d been holding. I hurried over to him as he staggered toward me and grabbed his arm. Hot blood could be felt beneath my palm.
“I’ll lend you my shoulder.”
I put Woojin’s arm over my shoulder. His heavy body leaned against me. I spoke with the uncle who had gotten up late, and the uncle carried my aunt while holding the little cousin in one arm.
And that was how we opened the warehouse’s iron door and stepped outside. Night was almost gone. Faint light spread at the edge of the deep navy sky. The ground was wet from the rain that had fallen all night, and the cold dawn air smelled of earth.
The first rays of sunlight touched Woojin’s face as he emerged from the dark warehouse.
*
Dad’s organization was dissolved at the end of that day. Of course, the chairman’s organization also lost its leader and was completely ruined.
Through the documents Dad left behind, we found the traitors hidden within the organization and cleaned up everything tied to the bloodshed. Only the company and the property run legally were left. Aunt didn’t say a word for a while. There was no way now to verify whether everything had been a lie from the moment she married him, or when exactly she had betrayed him. Still, little by little, life returned to normal.
For some reason, I felt like I had protected what Dad had spent his whole life desperately trying to protect. I didn’t know whether that had been Dad’s wish. But at least I believed what he wanted to leave me wasn’t a world like this.
The 2G phone was completely reset. The messages inside it were gone too. Woojin remembered the contents.
“If you’re looking at this, it means I’m dead, or that I wasn’t able to protect you.”
Woojin, lying in a hospital bed, stared at the ceiling and recited Dad’s message.
“Yeoju. Don’t be bound by the things your dad left behind. Throw it all away and live. In the place you want, with the people you want.”
That was all. No encrypted safe password, no hidden location of the assets. Dad’s final words were only a request that I survive. For a long time, I couldn’t say anything. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t cry, but in the end tears fell.
Woojin watched me silently like that.
And on the day he was discharged, he disappeared.
*
The season changed once. I was sorting through Dad’s villa. I left the study exactly as it was. I didn’t touch the red carpet, the cherry-wood desk and bookshelf, or the small sofa by the bed. I placed the parenting journal where it was most visible on the bookshelf.
After loading the last box into the car, I looked back at the villa. Warm sunlight had settled over the red roof. It didn’t look lonely like before. The moment I was about to open the car door, someone passing in front of the villa caught my eye. It was a man wearing a black hat pulled low. With his head down, he was walking with both hands in his pockets. I couldn’t see his face. But I knew. I ran straight toward him.
“Cha Woojin!”
The man stopped walking. Afraid I’d lose him, I grabbed his arm. Under my palm, I could feel a firm forearm. The man slowly turned back.
A familiar face emerged beneath the hat. Woojin looked down at me without saying a word. As if to ask how I’d known, one eyebrow lifted slightly.
My breath caught. I had a lot I wanted to say, but only one thing actually came out.
“Thank you.”
Woojin quietly looked at me.
A moment later, the corner of his mouth, visible beneath the hat, lifted faintly.
Noir is way too hard ㅠㅠㅠㅠ;;;; I’m so drained too... so I rushed and finished it..ㅠ
![I have a limited time [Night - Night - bl] thumbnail](https://cdnetphoto.appphotocard.com/fanfic/1566947/161750/thumbnail_img_20230416231537.png?width=93&height=62&format=webp)