Just Rip Off the Festering Wound
“I asked what you were doing here.”
Kwak Dojin approached with a rough expression, but his body suddenly staggered.
‘Dammit.’
It was the aftereffect of the horse-riding stance.
His leg muscles felt like they’d been torn apart, making even walking difficult.
“Senior!”
Baek Yuyeon shouted in surprise.
“How did you know I was here?”
Hwang Minwoo stepped in front of her with a mocking smirk.
“Yo, yo, Mad Dog. You need to calm down.”
“You son of a bitch…”
“What, you going to hit me again? Hit me and get disciplined? You know the only reason you got away with being held back instead of expelled after all those disciplinary actions is because of me, right?”
“You! You!”
Up on the roof, Kang Hyeon was watching the situation with amusement.
Kwak Dojin—he was a good kid until his second year, right?
Looking at it, there seemed to be quite a story tangled between those three.
“Discipline? Yeah, you motherfucker. Let’s see you try getting me disciplined again.”
As Kwak Dojin charged like a bull, Hwang Minwoo flinched and stepped back, overwhelmed by his momentum.
“Has this crazy bastard truly lost his mind?”
“Senior! Please stop!”
The one who blocked his approach was Baek Yuyeon.
“Why are you always like this, Senior?”
“What?”
“There is no reason for you to intervene in whatever I do here. I will handle my own affairs, so please stay out of it.”
At Baek Yuyeon’s sharp voice, Kwak Dojin’s footsteps came to a dead halt.
He knew better than anyone else that her two fists were trembling slightly.
“Did you hear that, Mad Dog? Know your place…”
“You stay quiet, too, Hwang Minwoo.”
Baek Yuyeon’s gaze turned coldly to Hwang Minwoo.
“Watch how you speak to my senior. If you keep showing that side of yourself, I will lose any desire to sign the contract.”
“A-Alright. I got it. Senior Kwak, I apologize.”
Bowing his head half-heartedly, Hwang Minwoo gave Baek Yuyeon a look.
Telling her they should change locations.
After a moment of hesitation, Baek Yuyeon turned her head away and disappeared from the spot.
Watching her leave while grinding his teeth, Kwak Dojin tried to say something but ultimately failed.
And then.
“Uwaaaah!”
Bang! Crash!
Howling like a beast, he slammed his bare fists into the wall.
Passing cadets frowned and avoided the area, but it seemed they were used to the sight.
It was just the feeling of the Mad Dog doing mad things.
Behind his back, a light thud of someone landing could be heard.
“…!”
When a startled Kwak Dojin turned his head, a familiar face casually offered him a bottle of whiskey.
“Want a drink?”
* * *
Sitting in an alleyway, the two of them each held a bottle and chugged straight from it.
Kang Hyeon expelled the alcoholic vapor moderately as he drank, but Kwak Dojin got drunk quickly.
“Fuck, fuck!”
He kept pouring liquor down his throat.
Did Kwak Dojin know that one bottle cost five hundred thousand won?
Normally, Kang Hyeon would have just walked past.
He was the type to think it was better for kids to solve their problems among themselves rather than having an adult intervene.
‘However.’
If Baek Yuyeon was involved, the story changed.
Especially if she was right on the verge of signing some strange contract.
“Kid, you like that girl?”
“…It’s not like that.”
“Then?”
“It’s none of your business, Professor.”
Kwak Dojin shot back bluntly and chugged from the bottle again.
Gulp, gulp.
“True, it’s none of my business. Whether you bicker with whoever, or tuck your tail in front of some pretty boy.”
“…I didn’t tuck my tail!”
Kwak Dojin flared up.
“Is that right? Then what did I see earlier? You couldn’t even throw a proper punch and were trembling.”
“That was…!”
Kang Hyeon provoked him on purpose.
He wanted to tear open the wound Kwak Dojin had buried deep inside.
‘Get drunk. And throw it all up.’
Hiding a wound doesn’t heal it.
If you hide it, it festers.
What festers eventually rots from the inside out, and later on, it completely ruins a person.
So just rip it off.
Tear it wide open. Squeeze out the pus. Spill blood if you have to—but empty out the rot first.
Only then can something else fill that empty space, right?
“If you’re scared, then don’t bark in the first place. Barking when you can’t even bite—does that make you a mad dog? You’re just a mutt.”
“Do you think I’m not biting because I don’t know how to bite?”
“I thought you didn’t know.”
“I’m doing this because if I bite, Yuyeon will get hurt!”
Kwak Dojin’s emotions were so intense he didn’t even know what he was saying, but with that shout just now, he felt he could finally breathe a little.
Once the tightly clogged block was undone, he wanted to unleash a little more.
“Hwang Minwoo is the eldest son of the Supreme King Guild Master.”
“Supreme King Guild?”
“Do you not know them?”
“I don’t.”
“…”
Kwak Dojin looked at him with an expression asking, ‘What is with this professor?’
The Supreme King might not be one of the top three guilds or a massive one, but it was a famous guild that no Hunter could fail to know.
“About a year ago, there was a dungeon practical exam.”
At that time, the monster’s aggro jumped to Baek Yuyeon, and Kwak Dojin threw his body to save her.
But when he found out the circumstances later?
It was Hwang Minwoo’s doing.
He had a one-sided crush on Baek Yuyeon, confessed publicly, and committed the act out of spite after being rejected.
“He’s a son of a bitch.”
“He is a son of a bitch.”
Grind.
Kwak Dojin ground his teeth.
“So I didn’t care about the consequences and beat the living daylights out of that bastard.”
“Well done.”
“What do you mean, well done!”
Kwak Dojin choked up and poured liquor down his throat.
“I almost got expelled because of that!”
That was the starting point of the incident.
After that day, Kwak Dojin was subjected to disciplinary action and even handed over to the expulsion evaluation committee on charges of assaulting a classmate.
He fiercely resisted, of course, but the Supreme King Guild had already bribed several professors.
“I learned about the world then. That it’s a rotten place where rich, well-backed thugs thrive more than people who live kindly.”
That must have been it.
The moment Kwak Dojin began to go astray.
Kang Hyeon silently drank his liquor.
‘No wonder.’
Whenever he looked at Kwak Dojin, he felt the kid was wearing clothes that didn’t fit while barking.
He wasn’t a thug, yet he felt like he was imitating a third-rate one.
Kang Hyeon had seen countless pieces of trash while rolling in the martial world.
True sons of bitches who chuckled while slitting throats.
Do you know the characteristic of such bastards?
They never bare their fangs in front of someone absolutely stronger.
If they think they’re going to die, they piss themselves, beg on their knees, and run away.
That is the true nature of trash.
‘However.’
Kwak Dojin was different.
Even under a killing intent that felt like it would sever his neck, he tenaciously crawled across the floor and crossed the line.
True trash could never do something like that.
He was just throwing a tantrum, asking to be looked at because he was hurt.
And there were no adults to set him straight.
“Kuuh, the liquor is bitter.”
Kwak Dojin’s voice, having nearly emptied a bottle, trembled slightly.
“I know it, too. The reason I haven’t been expelled yet. It’s because of Yuyeon. That idiot…”
Kwak Dojin clenched his fists tightly.
“She begged in front of that trash-like Hwang Minwoo bastard, saying my life was about to be ruined because I saved her. She pleaded with him not to expel me, at least.”
“…”
“That son of a bitch must have been absolutely thrilled when a woman who wouldn’t even look at him fell to her knees. Using that as an excuse, he’s had Yuyeon wrapped around his finger all year long.”
Honestly, Kwak Dojin was relieved.
At the fact that he wasn’t expelled.
“I don’t have parents. I was raised by my grandmother since I was young.”
Kang Hyeon felt a sense of kinship at that part.
Because he, too, had no parents and was raised by… old men when he was young.
“She dedicated her whole life, selling vegetables in the market, just to make me into a proper person. When I entered this Academy, she threw a feast for the whole neighborhood and cried. Saying our Dojin would become a Hunter and give her a life of luxury.”
Drip, drop.
Eventually, tears flowed from Kwak Dojin’s two eyes.
“To a grandmother like that… how could I say I was expelled for beating up a classmate? How could I make the excuse that I was unfairly kicked out because I had no backing?”
In the end, the things that held Kwak Dojin back were the people who loved him.
The sacrifice of Baek Yuyeon, who fell to her knees for him.
The expectations of his grandmother, who lived looking only at him.
“Do you know Professor Hwang Yerim? The top in the nation for Martial Medical Arts. Yuyeon is a genius who can enter as that professor’s top disciple. But… just to save me, she’s about to enter that son of a bitch Hwang Minwoo’s guild and sign a 10-year slave contract. I found her today after hearing that news! Uwaaaah! What a truly fucked-up world!”
“That’s how the world originally is.”
In Murim, types like Hwang Minwoo were a dime a dozen.
Hypocrites who wore the flashy signboard of a prestigious righteous faction while secretly ensnaring people with money and power behind their backs.
Conversely, he had also seen countless bastards like Kwak Dojin, who clumsily cried out for justice only to be trampled and discarded because they lacked power.
‘Justice? It’s a nauseating word.’
The world isn’t corrupt.
It merely rolls according to the logic of power.
Because powerless justice is always meant to be devoured by powerful hypocrisy.
“If you feel wronged, you need to get stronger. Why are you rolling in the mud together, bragging about how dirty you are, too? You foolish bastard.”
Kang Hyeon slowly raised his body from his seat.
He roughly brushed off his dusty pants, then snatched the empty whiskey bottle from Kwak Dojin’s hand.
“Uh, huh?”
Kwak Dojin’s eyes, half-hazed from the alcohol, blankly followed the hand.
“You emptied it all.”
Kang Hyeon clinked his bottle against Kwak Dojin’s empty one.
Clang!
The sharp clink of glass cut through the night air.
“I heard your whining well.”
“…I wasn’t whining. Just felt it was unfair.”
“So what if it’s unfair? Did you want someone to step up and slit that pretty boy bastard’s throat for you?”
Kwak Dojin’s lips clamped shut.
He never wished for that.
Because he had learned bone-deep that this was a world where no one would help in the first place.
“Listen well, mutt.”
Kang Hyeon’s lazy eyes instantly sharpened.
His heavy voice, reeking faintly of whiskey, struck Kwak Dojin’s ears.
“If you had it taken away because you lacked power, then you just need to take it back with your own power. Barking while rolling in the mud complaining it’s unfair should end today.”
“…”
“And you are an exception.”
“Pardon?”
What does that mean?
“You can no longer skip class. If you don’t show up at 6 AM tomorrow, know that you will die by my hands first, not the pretty boy’s.”
“…S-So suddenly?”
“It’s the price for snatching my expensive liquor.”
With those words, Kang Hyeon’s figure melted into the darkness and disappeared.
As if he were never there to begin with.
“Hah?”
A faint scoff hung on Kwak Dojin’s lips.
Still, the burden weighing on his chest had eased a little.
* * *
That night.
Faculty housing corridor.
Knock, knock.
At the sound of a knock, the door swung open.
“Mr. Kang Hyeon?”
Lee Seah, wearing a towel over her head as if she had just finished showering, welcomed him with round eyes.
Kang Hyeon abruptly shoved two empty whiskey bottles into her arms.
Lee Seah knew very well what that meant.
‘He wants me to buy the exact same ones.’
“Oh, this is an expensive one, and you finished it all?”
“I have something for you to investigate.”
“Pardon? Ah, Cadet Baek Yuyeon you mentioned earlier today?”
“No, not that.”
“Then?”
“The Supreme King Guild.”
“…Supreme King?”
“Yeah, and a list of Academy professors tied to that guild, whether it’s through bribes or their livelihood.”
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