Chapter 6 - Shadows of the Past
The silence in the clinic stretched thin enough to snap. Outside, thunder shook the corrugated metal roof, rolling like distant artillery across the docks. Min-hyuk stared at the tattoo of the crane. It wasn't just a design; it was the personal seal of Kang Dae-hyun, the elder brother who had raised him in the gutters before being burned alive in a supposed warehouse accident orchestrated by Chairman Song.
Min-hyuk turned slowly toward the little girl sitting on the stool.
"Your father's name," Min-hyuk said, his throat tight, the words feeling like jagged stones. "What was it?"
Su-ah set the empty plastic syringe down carefully. "Kang. Kang Dae-hyun. Mom told me never to tell anyone that name, or the bad men with the snake tattoos would come for us."
Min-hyuk's world tilted on its axis. The twins whimpering in the basket, the starving girl who had thrown a can of milk at a gunman's head, the dying woman on the operating table—they were not random beggars. They were the bloodline he thought had turned to ash ten years ago. All this time, Song had not only murdered his brother; he had hunted Dae-hyun’s pregnant wife into the deepest, dampest cracks of the city to die in silence.
Dr. Han noticed the change in Min-hyuk's posture—the subtle drop of his shoulders, the lethal stillness that settled behind his dark eyes. "Min-hyuk? Who are they?"
"They are my debt," Min-hyuk whispered.
He turned sharply to his remaining lieutenant, who was leaning against the doorway guarding the hall. "Gather every weapon we have stashed at the safehouse. Call the loyalists from the third precinct. We are not running."
"Boss?" the man blinked in confusion. "Song has over two hundred men between here and the port. If we stay, they'll surround us like wolves."
"Then we will build a fortress of their bones," Min-hyuk said calmly, checking the slide of his Sig Sauer with a definitive, mechanical click.
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Suddenly, the clinic's fluorescent lights buzzed violently and died, plunging the entire room into absolute pitch-blackness.
From the front shop of the dry cleaners came the distinct, muffled shatter of a display window breaking, followed by the soft, coordinated scuff of tactical boots moving swiftly across broken glass.
