#82 <The Epic for the Villain (3)>
Moon Seok-il clenched his jaw.
Now that he thought about it, she was a real pain. That nameless woman who had entrusted them with the request. She had only referred to herself as “Baek Sajang.” Anyway, she had driven them into a corner.
It was a request to kill, but he swore he had no intention of harming civilians. The target was just an ordinary civilian, not a villain.
The problem was that they had underestimated the target, thinking he was just some country bumpkin. But there were people sharing the situation via radio, though they weren’t visible. He didn’t know who they were. It was strange, and he thought about giving up, but the upfront payment was too large, and he had already used it for his comrades in need.
‘Well, if it were an easy request, they wouldn’t have paid us so much to handle it.’
Moon Seok-il bit his lip and undid his sleeve button.
They were too far in to retreat now, and trying to resolve things through conversation would only make Jeong Sang-tae look like the victim.
Kim In-rang threw a right hook. The sound of the air being sliced was heavy.
Even though it was an unpredictable punch, Jin Hyuk’s guard was already up. It looked more like he was opening his hand to catch the fist rather than guarding.
But it was a feint by Kim In-rang.
Just a breath ago, the usually quick Jeong Sang-tae had gone in for a close-range strike and ended up in a bad spot. Kim In-rang had no reason to take such a risk.
“Gotcha.”
Kim In-rang, having retracted his right hand, grabbed Jin Hyuk’s right shoulder with his left and smiled triumphantly. At first glance, he looked kind. But it was a smile he couldn’t maintain. The joy of success was short-lived, as he realized that what he had grabbed wasn’t a human shoulder but something more like a rock. Kim In-rang’s head turned cold.
At the same time, he saw Jin Hyuk’s lips twist into a smirk.
“What…?”
Jin Hyuk let out a sigh-like breath, as if he found it ridiculous.
Jin Hyuk wrapped his right arm around Kim In-rang’s forearm, restraining him, while extending his left arm.
He just extended it.
‘What are you gonna do now that you’ve grabbed me?’
Whack-!
It was too fast for Kim In-rang to dodge. It was the same attack that had been used on Jeong Sang-tae.
Kim In-rang, struck squarely on the chin by Jin Hyuk’s palm, which had been lightly lifted towards the sky, collapsed to his knees and fell forward weakly.
As he lost consciousness, Kim In-rang realized something. Jeong Sang-tae hadn’t been knocked out by the impact on his chin or the back of his head. The shock from that young man had traveled through his chin, struck his nasal cavity and brain, and exited through the top of his head. Kim In-rang’s nose burned, and something warm trickled down. In the illusion that his head had turned to mush, darkness crept into his consciousness.
He never imagined that a body trained through grueling practice could collapse so helplessly. The short time felt unbearably long. The pain, proportional to the perceived time, tormented his soul.
‘Two down, two to go?’
Jin Hyuk never let his guard down. The first two had been careless, making them easy to handle, but these were people accustomed to group combat. The numerical disadvantage was still a fact.
‘Those two will get serious now. Maybe I should get a little tense.’
But he wasn’t intimidated or scared. Any other teenager would have wet themselves facing adults with such imposing physiques, but Son Jin-hyeok had a clear reason to face them.
In fact, he was less excited than when he had competed in track and field.
‘These guys are definitely monsters.’
Jin Hyuk wondered as he watched the second and third attackers rush in. They were fast and strong, even by his standards. Could humans really be this agile?
Their hands, which extended and retracted quickly to avoid grappling techniques, their deceptive footwork, and their weaving, which was undoubtedly faster than judgment—it was truly ghost-like movement.
‘But they’re slow.’
Had his dynamic vision improved?
Or was it because he was in a desperate situation? It felt like his brain was spinning violently inside his skull. He felt his crown heating up.
While dodging attacks, Jin Hyuk casually placed his hand on his head. It wasn’t hot at all.
Thud-.
The two of them launched a coordinated attack, each trying to subdue one of Jin Hyuk’s arms.
Thinking he couldn’t let them grab him, Jin Hyuk quickly stepped back, shaking his arms as if in a judo grappling match. He dodged the subsequent attacks with light footwork. It was a movement even Jin Hyuk couldn’t understand with his mind—it was as if his body moved on its own.
‘If it were like before, they wouldn’t be easy opponents.’
Their movements were far more refined than those of athletes like Choi Tae-yang. If he hadn’t gone through his growth spurt, he would have been beaten to a pulp. That’s how skilled they were.
But in front of Jin Hyuk’s skill, which could even read their breathing, they were reduced to ordinary people.
Calling them ghosts was an overestimation.
Thud-.
Jin Hyuk’s elbow struck Kang Heon-chang’s right side as he tried to subdue Jin Hyuk’s right arm. Jin Hyuk had bent forward and thrust his elbow in a flash, unable to throw a punch due to the short distance.
“Ugh-!”
Kang Heon-chang let out a single cry of pain and fell to his knees.
Oops, I didn’t control my strength. Jin Hyuk muttered to himself.
Kang Heon-chang could tell. His ribs were broken, and the internal damage was severe. He could still breathe, so his lungs were probably fine, but if he didn’t get to a hospital soon, he could die from the injury. He should have insisted on giving up, even if it meant getting scolded by Moon Seok-il. Regret washed over him. The sound of the young man’s sneakers scraping against the cement pavement as he walked was terrifying and sent chills down his spine.
“Are you done? Are you going to kill all your comrades?”
Jin Hyuk, who had distanced himself from Moon Seok-il, spoke.
Moon Seok-il, without lowering his guard, glanced at his fallen comrades. Kim In-rang had fallen forward and seemed fine, but Jeong Sang-tae, who had been struck on the back of his head, and Kang Heon-chang, with his broken ribs, were in danger.
It hadn’t even been a few seconds since he had ordered them to subdue Jin Hyuk. That fact made it even more painful.
Jin Hyuk spoke again, exhaling deeply.
“Whew-, I’d rather just kill all of you. You know why, right?”
Jin Hyuk had clearly overheard their conversation about what they would do to his parents. For people like that, it might be better to just kill them and bury them.
But even if he dealt with them, the next problem would arise.
Who knows what kind of troublemaker would disturb the peace next?
“Just tell me, and I’ll let you go. Just tell me who sent you, why, and what you were ordered to do. You didn’t come here with good intentions, did you?”
“Hmm-.”
Moon Seok-il glared at Jin Hyuk and swallowed his saliva.
But his eyes, unable to hold out for long, drooped on their own.
‘Did I… get scared?’
He had planned to take Jin Hyuk quietly if they could talk. But he knew that their positions were too different for any meaningful conversation.
The fact that his comrades had been taken down was shocking, but even if all three of them had attacked, they wouldn’t have been able to handle Moon Seok-il alone.
Moon Seok-il had to make a choice. If he wanted to get his comrades out safely, there was only one way.
He reached behind his back. He was skilled in all martial arts, but he was most confident in his dagger skills.
As he gripped the flat, hard hilt of the dagger, courage rose within him once more.
“Old man, you really shouldn’t use that.”
But Moon Seok-il’s hand was faster than Jin Hyuk’s warning.
“Rock Seo-heum- You may hate me- But I- love you so much-”
Jo Il-hun, unaware of what was happening on the road above the house, was happily humming a song. He had a knack for singing all sorts of songs in a way that made listeners chuckle. It was understandable that he was in high spirits, having caught a rare wild boar.
Choi Jang-hwan, who was butchering the boar, scolded him.
“Hey, you idiot. Are you so happy about catching a boar that you’re singing?”
“Huh? What does singing have to do with the boar?”
Fact-based violence transcends time, and Jo Il-hun felt as if the knife in Choi Jang-hwan’s hand was stabbing his chest. The meticulous way he was butchering the boar felt as if he was carving out Jo Il-hun’s own ribs.
“Brother, you’re good at butchering boars, and you’re good at carving too-. Anyway, I’m a man-.”
“What? You’re a man? Am I a man?”
“You’re a man, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Jo Il-hun, the braggart, was strangely good with words. Choi Jang-hwan had never won an argument with him, so he decided to let it go. If he scolded Jo Il-hun for calling him a man, the guy would probably sit down and start lamenting his life, saying he was unlucky because he wasn’t married.
‘Damn brat, he should’ve just closed his eyes and gone along when the matchmaker from the office, Gwak Hyang-rim, came by.’
Jo Il-hun had waved it off, saying she wasn’t his type. He wanted someone who looked decent next to Han Yu-young, even if she wasn’t as good as Son Kwang-yeon’s wife.
Gwak Hyang-rim was considered a rare beauty in the area, but this brat was being picky for no reason. Choi Jang-hwan silently continued to carve the ribs.
“Why are you leaving so much meat on the ribs?”
“It’s for our Jin-hyeok. He’s still growing, so he needs to eat well.”
“Brother, Jin-hyeok is bigger than them-. What are they, just some adults? He’s probably bigger than most people in the neighborhood, except maybe Tae-yang.”
“Exactly! That’s why he needs to eat more!”
This time, Jo Il-hun lost.
A triumphant smile spread across Choi Jang-hwan’s face.
“But why do you keep saying ‘our Jin-hyeok’? Even your wife does that.”
“Jin-hyeok is my son, you idiot. He’s like my own son.”
“Oh, come on, don’t be so dramatic.”
Everyone knew it, but Jo Il-hun asked anyway, not wanting to lose.
“What else could I do? My mom went to Daejeon to take care of my youngest sister, and my wife had just given birth to Mi-kyung and was still recovering. I was shaking so much when I took him.”
As he said this, Choi Jang-hwan paused his carving and sighed, reminiscing.
He hadn’t even held his own daughter right after she was born. Back then, not even forty, Choi Jang-hwan couldn’t refuse when Son Kwang-yeon came to him early in the morning, his face pale, asking for help. He had taken the trembling newborn Son Jin-hyeok into his own shaking hands.
‘It must have been later than this time of year.’
It was a moonless night in early autumn. Relying on the bright starlight, he hurried along the field path to Son Kwang-yeon’s house, where Han Yu-young, despite it being her first childbirth, had bravely delivered the baby on her own.
Had he come into the world too early? The newborn was tiny and trembled with a pale, bloodless body. But he was determined to live, and that tiny fist clenched tightly remained etched in Choi Jang-hwan’s memory.
“I just held him, just held him. It was such a cold day, the poor baby suffered.”
He didn’t even cry. He just made little whimpering sounds, and when his mother fed him, he suckled like a gentle puppy. There’s a saying that a baby who doesn’t cry won’t speak, and Choi Jang-hwan wondered if that’s why Jin-hyeok was so quiet.
“Ah-, just thinking about that time makes my heart race even now. But at least he can talk, so that’s a relief.”
“But what will Jin-hyeok become when he grows up? He’s got a good build, he’s strong, he’s fast, and he’s good at studying. And what about his looks? With a face like that, the girls will be all over him.”
“Right-. Mi-kyung said he’s like a ‘gojae.’”
Slurp-!*
Choi Jang-hwan clicked his tongue in frustration.
“Huh? Gojae?”
Jo Il-hun, whose blood was already heated from drinking, widened his eyes like a rabbit. Gojae? That little kid, a gojae? Poor thing. They say heaven is fair, but did it give him all those talents just to take them away?
Like stripping the husk off a grain?
In this neighborhood, “gojae” referred to a man with incomplete genitals, a eunuch, but it also meant someone with outstanding talent or a tall person, which fit Jin-hyeok perfectly.
“But how did Mi-kyung know that?”
Mi-kyung was still young, wasn’t she? Jo Il-hun twisted his lips.
Huh? Choi Jang-hwan’s expression also turned dumbfounded.
In a village where a woman’s resentment could bring frost in May, and Choi Mi-kyung’s disappointment could turn a manly man into a eunuch, such things were not uncommon.
