Chapter : 8
He had to wander through his thoughts for quite a while to grasp the situation. He alternated between looking at the bandages wrapped around his waist instead of clothes and Hyun, who was staring blankly at him from in front of the bed.
If he retraced what had happened, it went like this:
He had offered up his hands and his abdomen to face the Chinese man wielding knives in both hands. When reinforcements arrived, he had already lost consciousness. And now, Lee Hyun stood before him, bandages in hand, tending to his wounds.
“…What about Jo Chi-hoon?”
Having calmed down a little, Jae-hyuk’s first question was about Jo Chi-hoon.
He had clearly seen the agents arrive before collapsing—so they must have caught him.
“We lost him.”
At Hyun’s calm reply, the wounds on his body seemed to throb even more painfully.
“What?”
“You’re really something. That’s the first thing you ask after waking up?”
Raising his voice caused his wound to pull open slightly, and pain shot through him. Jae-hyuk clutched his abdomen.
Still—they had lost Jo Chi-hoon. That meant…
“Don’t worry. Thanks to you, we caught Wang Hoon—the Chinese guy.”
Reading his expression, Hyun quickly added the clarification. Only then did Jae-hyuk seem to relax, the tension easing from his shoulders.
“I get that you were trying to catch Jo Chi-hoon, but unfortunately for us at Interpol, the Triads are more important. In terms of priority, Wang Hoon came first.”
While Jae-hyuk was confronting Wang Hoon, Jo Chi-hoon had quietly slipped away.
The agents who arrived had targeted Wang Hoon, whom Jae-hyuk had restrained, and they had succeeded in capturing him alive.
“Ugh.”
Feeling suffocated lying down, Jae-hyuk tried to sit up—but failed miserably. The moment he lifted his torso, pain from his wound surged through him.
With an exasperated expression, Hyun stood and gently pressed his upper body back down.
“Do people tell you you’re stupid a lot?”
“…Fairly often.”
Well, of course. Otherwise, who would think of stopping a knife-wielding opponent with bare hands?
While she shook her head, he lifted his hand to check it. It had been hurting unpleasantly for a while, and sure enough, his palm was wrapped tightly in bandages.
“You need your bandages changed. Planning to do it yourself? Stupidly?”
Hyun gestured toward his hand and the bandages.
It would be unreasonable to tend to his injuries with an injured hand.
Instead of answering, he simply avoided her gaze—offering himself up for treatment.
Her touch began at his waist.
With her slender fingers, she carefully fidgeted with the bandage before undoing the knot.
With hands like that, how did she…
Jae-hyuk recalled seeing Lee Hyun take down men who were easily twice her size. Just looking at her fingers, she seemed impossibly delicate. He couldn’t imagine where that strength had come from.
“This is going to hurt.”
Once the knot was undone, the large wound came into view.
Hyun began cleaning it with gauze soaked in antiseptic.
“Hhng!”
Even biting down hard to suppress a groan, breath escaped through his clenched teeth. Her movements were merciless, forcing him to grit his molars even harder.
“That’s what you get for charging in like an idiot.”
She had emphasized the word “idiot” several times now.
Not that he was offended by her choice of words.
He was just curious—if he hadn’t done it that way, could they really have kept Wang Hoon from escaping?
Jae-hyuk stared intently at Hyun as she disinfected his wound.
Sensing his gaze, she shot him a glare.
“What?”
Unable to endure the sharp stare, she paused her work and asked.
“Got something to say?”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep staring?”
“Your hand.”
Only then did Hyun realize that her chest was brushing against the hand wrapped in bandages. Squatting down to disinfect his abdominal wound had made contact unavoidable. She hadn’t even noticed.
“You crazy—!”
Startled, Hyun jerked back and threw the bandage she was holding straight at his face.
Fortunately, one of his hands was still usable, and Jae-hyuk brushed the bandage off himself.
“You’re not going to finish the treatment?”
He asked indifferently, addressing the fuming Hyun.
Completely unaware that the mere sight of him was irritating her further.
“Shut up!”
Since she had started, she had to finish.
This time, she carefully avoided touching him as she disinfected the wound.
The abdominal injury was large—big enough to require nine stitches.
When Jae-hyuk had collapsed, there had been so much bleeding it seemed like his organs might have been damaged. Fortunately, the blade had barely sliced past the skin. The suturing had gone well; as long as it was disinfected properly, he would recover.
And that responsibility fell to Hyun.
“Where are we?”
After finishing with his abdomen, Hyun lifted his hand to disinfect his palm.
Jae-hyuk, who had been silent while battling the pain, spoke again.
“My place.”
Hyun answered shortly and began unwrapping the bandage around his palm.
In truth, his hand was worse than his abdomen. He had gripped the knife so tightly that the flesh had split deeply—deep enough to nearly expose bone. Before he regained consciousness, it had been a gruesome sight.
“How long was I out?”
“About two days.”
“And Jo Chi-hoon in that time?”
Stupid, and persistent.
Of course, Hyun knew why Jae-hyuk was so fixated on Jo Chi-hoon.
It’s probably because of his late father.
But still—who throws themselves into mortal danger like that?
“We still don’t have his whereabouts. Even if he’s scared of the Triads, he won’t be able to set foot in Korea for a while. The Chinese boss is furious—swearing he’ll kill Jo Chi-hoon.”
The Triads had learned that Jo Chi-hoon had abandoned Wang Hoon and even run off with the money.
“That’s good, at least.”
“It’s because of that incident back then, right? The accident that killed your father.”
At Hyun’s blunt question, Jae-hyuk fell silent.
“I know everything. That’s why you’re trying so hard to catch Jo Chi-hoon. Revenge? Something like that?”
“…I’m trying to catch him because there are charges against him.”
He turned his head away.
There had certainly been a time when personal feelings drove him. But after continuing the investigation, he had long since moved beyond handling the case based solely on private emotions.
“What was the biggest charge you were investigating him for?”
Perhaps he had grown used to the pain; he endured better than he had during the abdominal treatment.
Even though it must have hurt more.
The scar was severe enough to make anyone wince, yet this time Jae-hyuk answered without even taking a sharp breath.
“Why? Think it’s different from yours?”
“I’ll know if I hear it.”
After staring at the top of her head as she focused on his hand, he finally spoke.
“We’d been keeping an eye on him anyway. There were too many suspicious moves in his track record. Then there was a whistleblower report about embezzlement of company funds. We’ve been tracking him since.”
He didn’t seem to know about the drug distribution yet.
Whether to reveal that was something to think carefully about.
Drug crimes were exactly the specialty of Jae-hyuk’s Major Crimes Unit, so it was only a matter of time before he found out. Perhaps he already suspected something.
Aside from that, Hyun roughly knew why Jae-hyuk couldn’t help but be wary of Jo Chi-hoon.
“Dae-ik contacted me.”
She brought him up partly out of curiosity.
After coming back from the brink of death, did Jae-hyuk still want to catch Jo Chi-hoon that badly?
“…”
“He was worried. Said he couldn’t reach you.”
There was no reply.
“Officially, Jo Chi-hoon isn’t a target for Interpol.”
Ignoring his silence, Hyun continued.
The only reason Cyclone had kept an eye on Jo Chi-hoon was because of Wang Hoon.
Wang Hoon, who had come all the way to South Korea, had been captured alive. Once negotiations with the Triads concluded, he would likely be sent back—probably in exchange for several high-priority criminals, like international arms dealers.
Until then, Cyclone had decided not to interfere with Jo Chi-hoon beyond monitoring him.
“Officially, that is.”
