Chapter 5 - The Backroom Clinic
The clinic was hidden behind a dilapidated dry cleaner’s in the industrial sprawl of Incheon. The neon sign outside buzzed with a dying blue flicker as rain lashed against the shuttered windows. Inside, the sterile smell of antiseptic clashed violently with the sewer stench clinging to Min-hyuk and the children.
Dr. Han, a disgraced former surgeon whose gambling debts were owned by Min-hyuk, worked frantically under a single overhead surgical lamp. His hands trembled slightly as he stitched an IV line into the mother’s collapsed vein, hanging a bag of broad-spectrum antibiotics from an improvised coat hanger.
"Her lungs are filled with fluid, Min-hyuk," Dr. Han said, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a bloody forearm. "She has severe malnutrition, bilateral pneumonia, and systemic infection. If you had brought her in two hours later, she would be a corpse. Even now... it's fifty-fifty. I need proper ICU equipment to stabilize her."
Su-ah sat on a steel stool nearby, holding one of the twin infants against her chest while the other rested in a basket of clean towels. She had washed her face in the clinic sink, revealing pale skin and large, solemn hazel eyes that seemed decades too old for her small skull. She was feeding the baby formula mixed with warm water from a plastic syringe Dr. Han had provided.
"Keep her breathing," Min-hyuk said, leaning against the counter while bandaging a graze on his own forearm. "Whatever equipment you need, buy it on the black market. Deliveries only, no digital traces."
"With what money?" Dr. Han snapped, fear bleeding through his exhaustion. "Word is already spreading through the underground. Chairman Song froze your secondary accounts. The bank houses in Gangnam aren't answering your calls. You’re a dead man walking, Min-hyuk. Taking in this stray family won't buy your way into heaven."
"I don't believe in heaven, Han. I believe in collateral." Min-hyuk walked over to the steel operating table and looked down at the mother's gaunt face. There was something unnervingly familiar about her features, a vague echo of someone he had known in another life, before the syndicate had carved away every trace of his humanity.
He leaned closer, noticing a faded tattoo on her collarbone—a tiny, stylized black crane, nearly obscured by scars.
Min-hyuk’s breath hitched. He reached out, his leather-gloved thumb pulling down her hospital gown slightly to expose the full mark.
"Where did she get this?" Min-hyuk demanded, his voice dropping into an ominous growl that made the room temperature plunge.
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Su-ah looked up from feeding the baby, her eyes widening. "It's Mom's mark. She said my father gave it to her before he died in the harbor fire ten years ago."
Min-hyuk froze. The harbor fire. The blaze that had consumed Chairman Song’s old headquarters—and the only older brother Min-hyuk had ever loved.
