Three months ago, he’d been training for the national amateur finals. Now? Now he was training to break a loan shark’s jaw.
Geon-woo helped Min-jae to his feet. They stood there, bleeding on a rooftop, looking out at the neon blur of Incheon.
“What now?” Min-jae asked.
The fight that followed wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t like the movies. Geon-woo took a pipe to the ribs and heard something crack. Min-jae’s left eyebrow split open like a dropped egg. They fought back-to-back, using boxing footwork to dance through the wreckage of broken mirrors and overturned benches. When it was over, five of Choi’s men were unconscious, one was limping away, and the two bloodhounds were kneeling in a pool of sweat, blood, and shattered plaster. Bloodhounds.S01.480p.WEB-DL.HIN-ENG-KOR.x264.MS...
Min-jae stood. He was shorter than Geon-woo, but denser—a fireplug of muscle and quiet fury. His own story was simpler: a sister drowning in medical bills, a loan from the same snake. “Then we don’t think,” Min-jae said. “We bleed. Together.”
The giant stepped forward. Min-jae met him. The fight was short and ugly—Min-jae took three punches that should have killed a normal man, but he kept coming, wrapping the giant in a clinch, biting an ear, doing anything to survive. Geon-woo, ribs screaming, ducked under Choi’s wild golf swing and landed two perfect punches: a jab to the throat, a cross to the temple.
“We work for people you crushed,” Geon-woo said. Three months ago, he’d been training for the
That was their contract. No lawyers. No cops. Just two bloodhounds, noses to the ground, tracking the scent of injustice through the back alleys of Incheon. The first fight was behind a fish market. Three of Choi’s collectors, all bulk and no technique. Geon-woo dropped the first with a liver shot that folded him like cardboard. Min-jae handled the second with a brutal right cross. The third ran—straight into a stack of crab traps. Easy.
“Two dogs with rabies,” Choi said, almost admiringly. “You could have worked for me.”
Choi did try. He sent six men to the gym at midnight. Baseball bats. Steel pipes. No rules. Geon-woo helped Min-jae to his feet
Geon-woo landed one final hook, the bag swinging wildly. “My mother’s shop. The lease. The ‘interest’ on a loan she never took.” He spat into a bucket. “Choi’s men came yesterday. Broke her wrist. She’s a calligrapher, Min-jae. She can’t even hold a brush now.”
Min-jae laughed—a wet, broken sound. “Still standing?”