CH 25.2

When Cocaine’s song stopped for a while, Jang Sejun got up from the floor and approached. He took a box out of the stuff in the yard that was to be moved, laid it on the floor, and sat Yaba on it. And he quietly went out the door. The winter wind blew and swept away the body temperature. Cocaine was seen wiping sweat through the open door. With his cheekbones dented and burns all over his body, the thug, who was in a coma, slowly gained new bones and flesh as a beautiful aria. Cocaine was caught by the wounded and kept singing for hours. Hashish, who had been healed earlier, pulled Cocaine up.

“This won’t do. You needed to be treated first. Get up.”

“Hey dickhead! Where are you going? You can’t get out of here before you fix them!”

The thugs jumped up and stopped them. Hashish said.

“Can’t you see the kid is struggling?! He couldn’t sleep all night and sang all night long. I will treat Cocaine first, so please be patient.”

“That bastard Cocaine, you say he’s injured, isn’t it just getting a few hits from the boss? If that bastard just screamed, we wouldn’t be like this!”

Cocaine’s lips hardened. Hashish laughed softly.

“If Cocaine screamed, do you think everyone would be fine? Then it would not have ended with a simple arson incident.”

“That’s why we covered our ears! The service bastards didn’t know that, so they could have been dealt with in one shot!”

“How frightened and startled would the child have been to be unable to speak? Get out of the way.”

Hashish took Cocaine out of the room without hesitation. Heroin and Morphine widened their eyes. Morphine groaned, covering his blood-stained face.

“W- Where are you going? You need to fix us first!”

“Move! Do you guys only think of yourself in this situation?”

“If it were you, would you think of others in this yard? There’s nothing wrong with what that hyung-nim said! To be honest, who do you think is the reason for us having chips in our heads… r- right?”

Morphine sought consent from Heroin. Heroin looked troubled, but he did not deny it. He also suffered severe burns to his body, and his broken leg made it difficult to even sit down. Hashish chuckled.

“Is that you felt deep down? The chips were for the boss to control Cocaine, but also to prevent the kids from escaping. When you’re sad, you act like you’re going to have all your gallbladder removed, and you’re just removing your masks just for something like this?”

“Just for something like this? We almost died! Anyway, if not for Cocaine we wouldn’t have gotten like this!”

“You bastards… !”

Veins popped up on Hashish’s neck and he clenched his fists.

“You eunuch fucker! I’ve had enough of this!”

A thug threw Hashish into the yard. All the thugs who could move his limbs rushed in, trampled Hashish’s head, and kicked his stomach. Hashish also flipped out, but he was no match for the thugs who had been hardened on the battlefield. Hashish twisted his body at the indiscriminate kicks.

“Stop it——! Everyone stop——!”

The door and windows shook at the scream of Cocaine. The people who were fussing all at once became immobile. A vibrating sound echoed inside the stillness. Cocaine looked down on foolish humans with unfocused eyes. Suddenly, a cold laugh broke out.

“I didn’t know you thought of me that way… Now I know.”

The eunuch singers had a pale complexion. Cocaine’s gaze turned to the singers, passed the thugs, and ended up on Yaba.

“But I think Yaba knows this better than I do?”

Why do I have to listen to all my complaints when I’ve suffered this because of you?

Those eyes clearly conveyed such. He also seemed to think that this was the work of Chairman Cha. Yaba leaned his head against the wall and smiled.

“Because you are a god. A noble being who has to endure everything even if stupid humans turn arrows of unreasonable criticism.”

Cocaine took it for granted that he was unilaterally admired, but he didn’t know that he had to pay the price. Healing and killing were the decisive reasons why the two-faced voice became a sanctuary. Since they were not protected by the god they blindly worshipped, it was natural for the weak humans to be shaken. Morphine screamed loudly.

“Why is that lunatic suddenly brought into this? No matter how many bad things he has done to you, isn’t it too much to accuse him of such things?!”

Cocaine swallowed a bitter laugh. Without replying, he supported the crumpled Hashish in the yard.

“If you fix that bastard, you’ll die first!”

“Then I won’t sing to anyone.”

“This bastard!”

When the thug tried to punch Cocaine, another stopped him.

“Hyung-nim! Calm down. Then, if that bastard really flips out and screams…”

“Fuck… !”

The thug grinded his teeth and went out the gate. Cocaine brought Hashish into the room and started healing.

“You should have screamed like that before.”

Morphine murmured and pressed a tissue to the corner of his blood-stained eye. After healing the thugs, it was Morphine and Heroin’s turn. After a while, Jang Sejun took a deep breath and entered the yard. Both of his hands were full of bags. Jang Sejun went to the room with Cocaine without a glance. As the song of Cocaine played, he stopped at the door and listened to his beautiful tone.

When the song was over, Jang Sejun went into the room and offered bread and milk to Cocaine.

“Thanks.”

Cocaine gave a tired smile. Jang Sejun placed a heater next to him while looking at Cocaine’s complexion and closed the door to prevent the wind from blowing. But it was strange. Jang Sejun did not seem to have any intention of actively taking Cocaine to the hospital like Hashish.

Hashish looked at Jang Sejun as if he wanted to eat him. It was because Jang Sejun was the first to receive healing over him. Jang Sejun left the room without giving Hashish anything. The long legs came to Yaba, who was crouching in the yard.

He held out bread and milk in front of Yaba. When he didn’t even look at it, Jang Sejun ripped off half of the plastic bag, opened the milk spout, and placed it next to the box where Yaba was sitting. He sat silently like a mutt waiting for his master to eat first. Yaba pushed him away with frosty eyes, and he got up with downcast eyes.

Turning his back on him again, making the bizarre act of randomly giving bread to the remaining singers and thugs. Hashish did not receive the bread offered by Jang Sejun and kept his bloody glare.

“When did you move here?”

Jang Sejun answered with a strange accent as if reading a book.

“Yesterday, at 1:45 PM. I was supposed to come in at 1:30, but the road was blocked…”

“How did you know about the dormitory?”

“… I laid down to sleep, but there was smoke.”

“Why did you come to this town?”

“… I like it here…”

“Why did you suddenly like this town?”

“… I just… like it.”

Jang Sejun mumbled as if he was overwhelmed by the pouring questions. Morphine, watching the scene, approached Yaba. Compared to others, he had only a bruise on his face and a popped lip, thanks to him quickly running away when the service thugs attacked him. Unlike eunuchs who left all their fortunes in their dormitories, Morphine said that he hid the money he had saved up to buy luxury goods in a secret place outside of the dormitory.

“Isn’t Hashish a complete asshole? He gave us a house and even bought bread, but he can’t say thank you. But speaking of this landlord, didn’t I mention that a handsome man moved in before? That’s him! Looking at it up close, it looks like some kind of celeb. Even entering the battlefield where the thugs are fighting, and giving bed and food… He is a young man with a sense of justice, which is rare these days. He seems to be acquainted with Cocaine, but do you know anything about it?”

“No.”

The rest did not know that the reason he was willing to give up his house and buy bread and milk was because of Cocaine, so they only thought of Jang Sejun as a good neighbor. Yaba threw the bread and milk that had been placed on his hip. He hugged his knees and stared at the cement floor with his eyes wide open.

“With a temper tantrum.”

Morphine clicked his tongue and looked at Yaba’s knees and shriveled forearms.

“This would be enough for it to be healed by Cocaine’s songs… I mean, why doesn’t it work for you?”

When he was young, he had a knee treated by Cocaine. Healing was definitely effective back then, but why was it useless now? He heard that bodily damage has little to do with the will of the person being healed.

Even if 1% doesn’t want to be healed, or extremely refused to heal. However, no matter how much a person wants to die, it was only a longing to escape from suffering, and the will to live was there at the bottom. After all, there is only a difference in intensity, and healing should work for everyone. So did that mean that Yaba completely rejected healing by Cocaine?

“Ah f… Where are we going to live now? The boss won’t even have time to worry about the store here, and I heard that the store is also a mess! What are we going to do now!”

At that moment, Morphine hit the ground and complained.

“Live… here…”

His gaze turned to the owner of the voice. His eyes were so quiet that it was hard to tell if he was the one talking. As if to inform them again, Jang Sejun said.

“You can live here until you find a house…”

Yaba just hardened. Hashish’s eyebrows wrinkled, and Cocaine looked surprised. Morphine asked with his eyes the size of a lamp.

“R- Really? So, may I be a little indebted to you then? Since there are two rooms, one can be used by hyung, and the rest can be used by us.”

“Hey.”

Morphine yelled again as Heroin glared at him.

“Well! It’s not polite to ignore people’s sincerity!”

Jang Sejun answered.

“I can sleep anywhere… Even before I came here, I looked at the sky… There were many times when I slept looking at the stars…”

Heroin looked at Morphine and said to Jang Sejun.

“We’re so indebted to you today, but it is too much. We don’t know when we’ll find a new place to stay, and our manager won’t allow it.”

Sejun looked around the yard and the people occupying the room. And he said softly.

“It’s okay… We’ve all heard Chaewoo’s songs… Then we’re all one…”

“… O- One?”

Pfft! Morphine covered his mouth and held back his laughter. Heroin also bit his curled up lips. Jang Sejun was the only one who was serious.

“And you’re Sejin’s friends…”

Morphine looked puzzled.

“I know Cocaine is Chaewoo, but Sejin? Who is that? I think I’ve heard that name before…”

Jang Sejun’s eyes fell on Yaba. He closed and opened his bare lips.

“Sejin is my younger br-”

“Shut your mouth.”

Who’s your brother? Who?!

Yaba looked at Jang Sejun with thorny eyes.

“Shut your mouth. Don’t say anything.”

Yaba’s eyes clouded with simmering anger. Jang Sejun’s pupils fluttered as black as Go pieces. But the wounded black eyes were resolute.

Yaba felt nauseous. Cocaine with a complex expression could be seen from a distance. Yaba turned his head and cut it all off.

He couldn’t believe that the guy who had been relying on diapers to hide his poop and pee had changed into such a fine appearance. He broke out of the enclosed world, but Yaba was trapped that day. He lost his name, he lost his manhood, he lost his song, he lost his family. It was Yaba’s everything. A single room and a loaf of bread could not make up for the enormous loss. Then the miserable past would be very unfair.

t/n: changing my release schedule to once a week! and I might not be able to update as often in the future since I’m kinda busy with school