38: Incheon [13]
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"Ohh, they are not dead, right?"
Samuel turned at the voice—sharp, familiar, perfect Korean cutting through the drizzle of the ruined street.
"Ahh, So you have taken the care of those fodders?!" the voice asked.
Samuel's body tightened. He was standing over a collapsed yard of bodies, chest heaving under a drenched suit, a cigarette dangling between two fingers. Muscles flexed like cables beneath his skin. He turned; the smoke from his cigarette trailed in the cold air and his eyes—hard, precise—locked on the man who'd spoken.
"Hmm, You woke up after that..." Samuel said, slow, taking a drag that tasted like metal.
He walked forward, boots crunching on glass and grit, and stared Jaun Ryu dead in the eyes.
"Jaun Ryu!?" he snapped.
Jaun Ryu lifted his head with an almost lazy contempt, face a map of scars and calm. "Woah. That's some fearsome eyes, Samuel Seo."
Samuel didn't give him space for another syllable. He'd already loaded his arm, shoulder coiling like a spring. "Dead Men should be dead." He threw everything into the blow.
Baam!!!
The sound hit the alley like a gun. Samuel expected an impact that would shudder through the street, a human body folding—like it had so many times. But what landed back at him wasn't the kind of return he'd felt before.
"Hmm, What this, he—" Samuel's thought cut off as something cold and thin sank through his clothing.
Jaun Ryu's iron needle log was in place, slick and precise. One of the needles had slid into Samuel's flank, another rested in his hand like a prop—innocent, wait-and-see. Samuel grabbed himself as the burn spread.
He stepped back, instinctively clasping his hand to the wound, fingers coming away slick with heat. "He blocked it...but what is this!?" he thought, stunned. The needles weren't designed to kill—at least not the way ordinary weapons did. They punctured with clinical cold, and Jaun held them like a calm surgeon.
Jaun Ryu watched calmly. He didn't seem to have intent to fight; his posture was placid, almost bored. Samuel crouched a hair, weight shifting, defensive.
"You are his Subordinate, right!?" Jaun Ryu asked low, voice sharpened like a blade.
Samuel's jaw dropped. "What do mean!?" he barked.
Jaun smirked, letting the question hang and spin. "Heh, What do 'I' mean? I mean that..." He let it settle, then flicked a look as if a puzzle had been solved. "You're Joongoo's subordinate right!?"
Samuel's mouth fell open. For a beat he simply stared—an explosion of recognition and disbelief tearing across his features. "You know him!?" he demanded, as if the answer should explain all things.
"Huh, I know him, I absolutely know him..." Jaun's voice slid into something colder. Then the mask slipped; his face lowered and teeth showed. His voice dropped into a dangerous growl, and the past seemed to crawl out of the cracks. "OF COURSE I KNOW THAT TRAITOR!?"
The air changed. Samuel's reflex made him lunge. He loaded another punch, a raw shout from the throat—"SHUT YPU TRAP, MOTHERFUCKER!?"—and struck.
Boom!!!
The impact slammed into Jaun's cheek, a punch that would put a normal man on his knees. Samuel's eyes widened when Jaun didn't buckle. Jaun had turned his face—calculated, minimizing damage. It was a trick Samuel had seen before, an old, ugly saving of skin. But then, a pain like ice hit Samuel's gut.
He looked down.
Jaun's iron needle had slid through, a thin, terrible thing that left Samuel seeing stars. He tried to fall back, but another movement, another log, and a second blow cracked down on his head.
Bam!!!
Blood erupted. Samuel staggered. The world tilted. The alley's clean geometry blurred. He tasted iron. The cigarette dropped from his fingers and hit the ground, hissing as it landed on pooled water. His hands went to his skull. Blood streamed down, warm and relentless.
"I trained this much, even used my last resort against him, but what is he, how is he standing and can attack with such force which could shatter one's skull!?" Samuel thought, disoriented and furious. He'd poured everything into being the alpha, the chest monster, the one who could turn a desert into a battlefield and remain standing. This—this was not expected.
Jaun Ryu exhaled, a small breath like someone finishing a sentence. He looked at Samuel with a slow, cold pity. "Your Master..." Jaun said, voice carrying a weight that made Samuel's heart spike. "was once a very good friend of mine."
Samuel blinked blood and rain from his eyes, feelings collapsing inward. "I can't tell you more than this but I will tell you one thing..." Jaun continued, eyes boring into him like heat seeking bone. He leaned forward, and every word cut.
"Joongoo...has more complex life story than you all can imagine...and that all started from this soil...started from Incheon."
Samuel's eyes bulged. The sentence seemed to morph the air: Joongoo—traitor,friend—suddenly this web. Samuel clutched his skull, a wild, animal sound cracking from his chest. He opened his mouth to ask, to demand, to tear the truth out, but the sound of a ringtone cut through like a copper bell in a chapel of ruin.
Tring—ring—talla—llala.[A/N: Samuel's Ringtone from my side]
Samuel's phone buzzed against the asphalt and lit up with a name that made his guts twist.
He snatched it, swearing under breath. "Why the hell is Gangseo Weirdo, Jake Kim is calling me!?"
Jaun Ryu's gaze held for a second like a photograph; then he hedged forward with an odd insistence. "You might try to pick it up, Because of you don't, maybe your friend might lose his life, here in Incheon."
Samuel's thumb hovered. The screen still flashed. He couldn't afford to lose allies; not now. Not in this mess.
He accepted the call.
"What happened you Fucker, why are you—" he barked.
Jake's voice came thin and broken, near-hysterical. "S-S-Samuel...please...take me....to...Lineman"
Jake's words were guttural, soaked with a grief that trapped the air in Samuel's throat. There was something about the way Jake asked: not a demand, not bravado, just the rawness of a man begging for a friend to be saved. Samuel heard how Jake had been used to standing, to slapping down anyone who crossed him—this voice cracked. The fear in it was heavy.
Samuel's mind went instant, rehearsed chaos flipping through: Lineman? Mugak? Each name a shard. "What-What happened Jake!?" he demanded, panic and command braided. "What happened, Did he lose to Mugak? What's with Lineman!?"he thought in his mind.
Jake's reply came as a string of broken grammar and dread. "Lineman....take me or else...he will die...Pacheon Jo will...."
Samuel froze on the word. Pacheon Jo. The name landed like a boulder. It meant a fight that could swallow men whole.
"What? Pacheon Jo!?" Samuel shouted, the timbre cracking with danger and fury.
Across from him Jaun Ryu shifted, then said, "Go to you friend."
The street around them had become a tableau of war: beaten bodies, the muted cries of the wounded, the metallic scent of blood. The sky was a leaden lid; the concrete underfoot a map of violence.
Samuel's body moved on its own. He glanced at Jaun, searching for betrayal or trap. Jaun's face was unreadable, but his hand tipped toward the road. There was an odd,… reluctant honor in it now—not friendship, but a thing like it.
Samuel swallowed. The phone still in his hand blinked with Jake's pleading. He turned his head toward the wrecked line of people, toward the ruin that might hide his man.
Jaun Ryu spoke again, softer this time, the words clipped but decisive. "You should go, and get your friend, because if he is fighting Pacheon Jo, he might die, and I also don't want to fight you know, since Pacheon Jo is not on his lair, I too, have something it do."
Samuel's mouth tightened. He wasn't built to beg or to wait; he was built to go, to barrel forward until nothing stood. He had men who relied on him to do exactly that.
"Stay right where you are, I am coming, Send ,e the location if possible," he said into the phone, voice knife-steady despite the blood on his lips. Determination made his features hard again.
He looked at Jaun once—eyes sharp, a flash of old familiarity there and the echo of something like history—and then turned and ran, back toward the city that had birthed this mess, toward Incheon's rotten heart, toward whatever fight would decide a life.
•••
[A/N: Goona be rushed from now on.[got the pun, right?]