Kill Your X Chapter 57

‘Is it because he’s Detective Shim’s bloodline? His innate guts seem good.’

After grasping the child’s family relations, Seo Seunghan made the final decision to incorporate the child into the organization. Some members expressed concern over the boss’s decision.

‘Couldn’t this brat turn against us when he grows up? If he finds out we’re the ones who killed his parents….’

‘Even if he finds out later, what can he do? If need be, we can just use him until he’s fully grown and then get rid of him.’

Si Seunghwan showed an unconcerned reaction. Thus, against his will, the child became a member of the organization.

Even without overt violence, the organization was not a suitable environment for a child to grow up in. The child grew up without proper discipline or affectionate care. The only time he was praised was when he handled the tasks given by other members well.

‘Damn. See, our boss has a good eye. How common is it to find a guy who’s calm even after sticking a knife in someone’s belly? Even the guys who join as adults tremble at first, saying they can’t do it.’

‘Isn’t he a dumbass if he can’t do it when this is all he’s seen since he was young? This is also, what, you know. Like early education.’

The Kumto gang’s business was based on illegal money lending. After his body had grown to some extent, the child followed other members and helped with debt collection.

The task of threatening and collecting money from those who had been driven to the edge of life and resorted to illegal private loans was by no means pleasant. The child showed no mercy to the circumstances of those who fought back tooth and nail, having nothing left to lose.

At first, the gazes upon him were not favorable, but at some point, the child became an indispensable existence to the organization. It was natural for the boss to favor a subordinate who perfectly handled any dirty work assigned to him.

‘Hey, at this rate, isn’t the boss going to actually put this kid on his family register? We should probably go easy on him from now on.’

At the child’s frightening growth rate, some members expressed their concerns mixed with jokes.

A child who was not on the family register even in his late teens. Due to his distinctively black hair and eyes, and the tenacity with which he would bite down on a targeted prey until the end, he was more often called by the nickname “Heukgyeon” (Black Dog) than his unofficial name, Seo Seunghan.

✽✽✽

Life, people, were ugliness itself.

The man finally came to understand why so many people came to Hell while working in the organization.

The man was born with most of his memories from when he worked as a gatekeeper dog in Hell. After growing up to a certain extent, he no longer confused the present with the past. Even while traveling the country with other members, he did not forget the purpose for which he came to this world.

The punishment given by the Demon King was clear. To find the soul he had disloyally coveted and return to Hell. To do so, Seunghan had to kill the other, and he too had to die a total of three times.

He thought the soul search would be easy, but there was an unexpected obstacle. This world was much wider than Hell, and the only clues he remembered were the soul’s scent and taste. Since he couldn’t eat souls as a human, he had to rely purely on the scent in his memory. Finding the owner of the soul was no different from finding a needle in a desert.

He was told to bring back the soul when it was most deliciously ripe, but the problem was that he couldn’t remember how to make it reach its peak season.

As he lived, he would occasionally meet humans with attractive scents, but none were like the first soul he had tasted. While the man failed in his search hundreds, thousands of times, time passed by just fine. He thought that although the work was rough, the advantage was that he got to travel to various places, but with no results, he also felt there was no reason to stay in the organization any longer.

The average human lifespan is only about 80 years, so could he even find that soul in this lifetime? He thought it might be better to just return to Hell and perform another punishment. As long as he belonged to Hell, it was his fate to never be at ease.

‘Hey, mutt! Do me a favor.’

As always, opportunity came in an unexpected way.

As soon as he turned his head in the direction of the voice, a piece of clothing flew at his face. Seunghan, having identified what was obscuring his vision, slightly furrowed his brow. The name embroidered on the stiff white top was Si Yeonho; what he had thrown was none other than a high school uniform.

Si Yeonho was the only son of the Kumto gang’s boss, Si Seunghwan, and the sole heir to the organization by bloodline. Yet, his actions were immature.

Usually, he would only ask for trivial errands like buying this or bringing that, but this request was rather reckless.

‘Haa, fuck. I don’t want to go to school, but Dad keeps nagging me, saying he’ll kill me if I don’t go. As if he genuinely cares what I do anyway!’

It hadn’t even been that long since the new semester started, and he was already saying that. Seunghan meaninglessly fiddled with the uniform that had perhaps never been worn by anyone. He usually wore black clothes because he often got blood on them, but the uniform shirt, seen up close for the first time, was as white as the first snow.

School, uniform, new semester. All things far removed from Seunghan’s life.

‘The school is in a different area from the middle school I went to, so no one will know my face anyway. So you go and pretend to be me sometimes in that. They say I need to meet the minimum attendance days to graduate.’

Looking closely, Si Yeonho’s one cheek was red. Seunghan later found out that he had gotten slapped after talking back to the boss, asking why he couldn’t just bribe the high school principal.

‘My dad only looks at the results, so it’ll be fine. He’s busy traveling abroad with my stepmom all the time anyway. Anyway, I’m counting on you, mutt.’

Si Yeonho, having spouted out all he had to say, exited with a guitar on his back. Did he say he was going to form some kind of band? He was the type to naturally pass on all the things he didn’t want to do to others.

But can I really go to school for him?

He didn’t have much aversion to doing things others told him to do, but this was the first time he was asked to openly impersonate someone else. He had often been to the shantytowns where debtors hid, but he had never been to a place where students of that age gathered.

After a moment of thought, Seunghan decided to grant Si Yeonho’s request for the time being. If they got caught later, they would both just get beaten up and that would be the end of it.

And so, for the first time in his life, Seunghan wore a school uniform. He was the same age, but there was a height difference with Si Yeonho, so the pants were a little short. He paid it no mind and went to the high school he had supposedly enrolled in.

Seunghan was flustered that there were far more people at school than he had expected. The kids of his age, crammed into a small space and bustling about, were extremely noisy, smelled a little, and in any case, were not a very beautiful sight. In the distracting environment, Seunghan would rather be chasing a debtor.

Although he came to school in Si Yeonho’s place, he had no intention of acting like a real student and attending classes. He found out separately that if he filled just one-third of the total attendance days, he could graduate. Seunghan walked past the classrooms and went straight to the teachers’ office.

The homeroom teacher, seeing a student from her class for the first time since the new semester began, was quite taken aback.

‘Oh my, you must be Yeonho. The teacher was very worried because you kept being absent.’

She had been puzzled because whenever she called his home, they only said they would send him soon. It was also strange that the person who answered the phone changed every time she called the same number, and their generally vulgar way of speaking made her worry they were like gangsters.

‘You’ll come to school regularly from now on, right?’

‘My attendance is checked, right?’

‘Huh?’

It was a deep, heavy voice that contrasted with his pretty face.

‘Try not to call the number listed as my guardian. Most of the time, they’re busy burying people. If you don’t want to make your own life difficult, don’t try to poke around carelessly or think about reporting it somewhere.’

The teacher’s jaw dropped at the student’s added words. The suspicion that the child was from a gangster family turned into certainty in that moment.

Seunghan left the teachers’ office without hesitation. Now that he had finished the task Si Yeonho had given him, there was no reason to stay at school any longer.

He wondered what the bell that rang on his way here was, and it seemed that classes had begun. Seunghan watched the students of his age, squeezed between desks and chairs packed tightly like a chicken coop in a narrow space, through the window. Just looking at it was suffocating, and he could vaguely understand why Si Yeonho hated coming to school.

Having satisfied his small curiosity, Seunghan was about to leave the school when a scent carried on the spring breeze caught his ankle. It was a very faint but at the same time eye-opening scent.

Using his uniquely keen senses, Seunghan followed the source of the scent. The place where his steps stopped was the library, a full two floors away from the teachers’ office.

With a trembling heart, Seunghan stepped into the unknown world.

The space, with books packed densely on high and long shelves, felt stuffy in a different way from the classroom. Thinking that the spaces between the bookshelves were like a prison, he followed the scent. Only when he reached the very end of the library could he identify the person who had led him there.