Chapter 1

I was staring into the mirror. My body was a fat and ugly one, and I looked like a loser. I wore big round glasses. My clothes were second-hand, and my watch was a cheap one, which you could get on the street for a few dollars. But the reason, why stared in the mirror was in my face. I had a new big red scar in the middle of my face.

My name is Min-Soo and I live in Korea, specially speaking in Seoul. My life is like a big dog shit. I am often bullied by my classmates and even in my life outside of the school I don’t have a happy life. My father died when I was 5 years old and my mother lives with me and my older sister together. Even my sister hates me. She mostly ignores me and says that I am an ugly pig who should just go to die.

Now back to my scar which I observe in the mirror. It happened today when I went to school. Some of my older classmates who hated to the bones for no reason were waiting for me. They grabbed me by my clothes and dragged behind the school building. There they throwed on the ground and started to ask me if I had stolen a hat from one of them. It was a long time since I had felt so much fear in my life, even tough I was always bullied, and they had also beaten me up. But this time was different. One of them had this evil glint in his eyes and he took out a knife. He threatened me to give his hat back or I would have a meeting with the grim reaper. Naturally I hadn’t stolen their hats or whatever it was but they didn’t believe and so I also didn’t know the place where the hats were. They’re rage took over the mind and one of them said he would gift me a nice memory for the rest of my life. So, he cut through my face, and they didn’t hold back. After that they punched me again and again. I think I lied on the ground for around an hour before someone saw me and called an ambulance. In hospital the doctor said that the scar would remain, and I should go to a lawyer and fight for my rights. But my family was very poor and couldn’t afford a lawyer or anything that would help me. I even feared the day when the invoice of the hospital would arrive at home.

So now I was looking in the mirror at my ugly scared face and asked myself what I should do now. Should I commit suicide? No, I was a fucking coward and could never kill myself. Should I take revenge on them? Haha, if I weren’t even able to argue with my sister, how should I ever be able to take revenge on this bastard? No, all I could do was to sit around and make a long face. In times like these I often went into my room and watched some movies about gangsters and how they live freely and face every problem with confidence. When I had enough of watching some gangster movies, then I started my old computer and chatted with some guys in the internet. I found an internet group not too long ago where the main topic were gangster movies and how gangster lived. In this forum was my only friend. He called himself the Blood Dragon Hiroki and he knew everything about gangster and their lifestyle. I even had some time my doubts if he were himself a gangster, but I don’t think he is one. Because if he were on, he wouldn’t visit such a forum. In such days when everyone looked down on me and bullied me I would go to this forum and talk to him. He helped me already a lot in my life. He told me how to keep a low profile and he showed me a hidden app. With that I saw some interesting things like where to find which gang and which jobs one could take. He even gave me his phone number and we wrote together. But we didn’t often write to each other. I can’t afford internet or SMS for my mobile phone. Another reason was his location where he lived. His nationality was not Korean but Japanese and so he lived in Japan.  

Like always I talked to him about my problem how they bullied me. I even told him about my scar my now ugly face. He listened with patience to my story and said I should repay violence with violence. He was always like this. He always tells me to fight back or find someone who could help my fight them back. And like every time I told him that it was useless to fight them back and that I hadn’t the power to fight them. They would crush me instantly. Like a fly. No, I had to wait until they calmed down and then go back into my old life. I told him that and waited for an answer. A long time nothing happened until an answer came back. He wrote: Min-Soo if you ever find the willpower to fight back than go to this address. They will help you but know this. If you go there, then there is no coming back. Once one enters the shadow of this world he will forever remain in that shadow.

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A bit further down was an address in a part of Seoul which he never would visit if he could avoid it. He wrote back that he didn’t think in a near future he would need the address, but he thanked Hiroki and left the chat. Hiroki often wrote such stupid things which couldn’t be taken seriously. One time he even had sent him a link to a hitman website. He had often read about these scammer sites in the internet where you could ‘buy’ a hitman but in the end just the police or a big loss of money awaits one. So, he didn’t take this one serious too. But out of a feeling he copied everything from the chat on his mobile phone and then went down in the kitchen to eat something.

The days passed. He stayed at home for three days because he hoped that he could avoid any more beating and bullying until their rage calmed down. After a week he went back to school and hoped that whatever had happened had passed. But he was wrong, so fucking wrong. They just waited for him. They had smelled blood and they wanted more. This day was beside the day with the knife incident one of his worst days in his life. They had beaten him up around 5 times and after school he ran home even though sport was one of his big weakness. His whole face was bruised, and his face didn’t even really hurt. If just somebody could help him. He had tried to talk to the teaches but they didn’t want to be involved in this case. One of the reasons was they feared the thugs themselves and another reason was the parents of two of those thugs. One of them was the son of some company president and the other one had a father who was in a biker gang. So even if they would do anything against those boys, they would have to take the consequences on. Simply said, he was alone.

After I have arrived back home the first one who greeted me was my sister. She looked furiously at me, in her hand was some kind of a document. I wanted to ask her what was wrong when I saw the big red letters on the front side of the document. INVOICE. It was the invoice from the hospital. She shouted at me what I was thinking to go to the hospital and bring them a bill back about 2’500’000 won. Oh damn, it was way more expensive that I thought but I couldn’t change it now. I kept quiet and waited for her to calm down. Normally she would calm down after some lecture and then ignore me again. This time it didn’t happen, instead she became angrier with every word that left her mouth. In the end she said that I had to move out of the house. I just looked at her. Move out? Me? Without a Job and still in high school? That was impossible for me. She ignored my pleas and throwed my stuff on the street. My clothes, my magazines and my movies. When I asked her in shock where my computer and furniture was, she answered that she had already sold everything away. Then she turned around and said with her back to me, that I should never come back, or she would call the police. With that last sentence the door was shut, and I stayed outside. Just with my clothes and my mobile phone. I had lost my home and my family and more important my computer. I hoped that nobody would find the hidden drives with my all my beautiful girls on it. So, I wandered in Seoul around and didn’t know what to do until it became dark. Luckily it was summer right now and I didn’t need to freeze outside.

After a short walk and some crying and swearing I remembered something very important. Hiroki had written me about this last way out, about this special address. Which other choice did I have. Perhaps it was a fake, but what does it matter now, that I have nothing else to do. I went to this address in Seoul. As I came closer to my destination, I noticed the change in my surroundings. Everywhere were some weird and creepy guys. One of them even wanted to sell me some drugs, but I refused kindly and increased my pace. I just hoped that I wouldn’t step into deeper shit. Finally, after a long walk and a lot of scary people later I arrived in little alley. There were a lot of gang members around and other people who looked like trouble and everyone looked at me. I tried to ignore them and went directly to the house which was described. Some of these fellows in the street wanted to follow me, but when they saw my destination they stopped and became pale. I stood in front of a multi-storey house which looked quite good when I looked around. Every other house had graffiti on it or some windows were broken, but this one was totally fine. As I turned around to look for my followers, I saw with surprise that they all disappeared. I turned around and faced with all my little courage which I had left the door. Then I rang the bell.