Swallow Hunting - vanish into fiction

“Hide. Now.”

Asking questions at a moment like this was something only an amateur would do. Pushed forward by Han Young-hwa, Hae-jun could not even think of saying something polite and immediately looked for a place to hide. But there was nowhere suitable. Even the bathroom wall was made of transparent glass.

He was about to curse what kind of hotel used transparent glass without caring about privacy when he belatedly realized there was a blind inside. He hurried. The door could be locked, and if he pulled down the blind and held out, who would know?

What if the glass shattered?

As he stomped in panic, the man outside began counting. He expected a pause after three, but two and one came frighteningly fast. Startled by the speed, Hae-jun grabbed his clothes in a rush, then like an idiot caught his foot on a chair leg and crashed to the floor with a loud bang.

From afar it would look like a comedy, and up close it was black comedy. Rubbing his reddened knee, he staggered to his feet.

At the same time, the door opened.

A man like a walking door stood in the doorway. He entered with his head slightly bowed out of habit. He was so tall that Hae-jun had to tilt his head back to see his face.

He was handsome. Truly handsome. If he worked at a bar, the number one spot would be guaranteed, and if you saw him on the street, you would turn back three times, no, five times.

But Hae-jun was not bewitched. The situation was far too urgent. And he could not miss the dangerous aura pouring off the man’s entire body. He had seen plenty of people like this back in high school, when loan sharks and gangsters beat him over his father’s debts. People who smiled while beating others. Absolute thugs.

“Tsk. Playing it cheap.”

The man tapped his own cheek with the card in his hand and took a step forward. His gaze landed on Hae-jun. After looking over Hae-jun’s comparatively unimpressive body, the man snorted in disdain. Even so, Hae-jun could not bring himself to bristle.

The two hulking men standing behind him were terrifying as well. Hae-jun’s lower jaw trembled. He could not make excuses. A naked woman under a robe and a man wearing only underwear alone in a hotel room. What purpose could there be besides sex?

He should drop to his knees immediately, clasp his hands, and beg. This was a crisis that determined whether he would be buried alive or merely lose a testicle. Hae-jun did not want to lose his precious balls, nor did he want to die with dirt in his eyes.

There was only one option. Run. He felt sorry toward Han Young-hwa, but his own survival came first. Rolling his eyes around, he spotted a small gap between the legs of the man and the hulks. It looked just big enough for him to slip through.

He threw his body toward it. The skills he had learned as a kid, flying and crawling through back alleys to escape punks, had not died yet. Leaving behind the shouts of “Get that bastard!” from the hulks behind the man, he bolted for the emergency stairs.

There had been a long chase, and the place he reached after squeezing out every last ounce of strength was this alley. His bare feet that had pounded the asphalt were bloody, and his breathing was caught in his throat. Even so, Hae-jun made no sound. He did not want his already cheap life to end like a dog’s.

By some stroke of luck, the hulks split up into different alleys. Hae-jun leaned his back against the wall and slid down. A couple of passersby who had been nowhere to be seen when he was hiding glanced into the alley. Seeing Hae-jun wearing nothing but underwear, they snickered as if thinking he was some kind of pervert and walked on. Talk about public humiliation.

He could not get on the subway or a bus like this, so a taxi was the only answer. But the wallet with the little cash he had was back at the hotel. Going back there to retrieve clothes? If he had two lives, it might be worth trying. The hulks might still be wandering the alleys, but the man who looked like their leader was very likely still there. Being caught by him was far more frightening than being caught by the others.

In this line of work, how could he say he had never touched someone else’s lover? One day a customer’s husband barged into the bar, shouting about who the bastard was that slept with his wife. Another day someone flipped the place over demanding their money back. In those cases, lying low for a bit was enough. Most people flared up fast and cooled down just as quickly.

But that kind of shallow trick would not work on this man. He gave off a danger unlike anyone Hae-jun had ever met. He knew it. A sixth sense born from a rough life was screaming that this man could snap his neck with one hand as easily as breaking a bird’s.

And trusting instincts like that never hurt. Acting tough just because he had a dick would at best leave him injured, and at worst dead. That much was painfully obvious.