They Kidnapped the Wrong Boy, So He Stayed novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sugar
A hood comes off in a white penthouse, a gun touches Do-hyun's forehead, and a knife point goes under his nail; he names no one, and the CEO says he lives here now.
The hood came off, and the first thing Do-hyun saw was the gun.
It rested against his forehead between his eyebrows, and the steel was cold.
He was taped to a chair in a white room that smelled of coffee and clean sheets.
His jaw throbbed where a fist had hit it in the van, and the taste of blood sat under his tongue.
He did not scream and he did not pull at the tape.
He looked at the room first.
There was a bed far too big for one man, and a glass wall with the black river behind it.
The door had no handle on the inside.
"Chae Do-hyun," a man said. "Nineteen. Economics, second year."
The man sat on the edge of a desk three steps away with one foot swinging.
He wore a dark suit and a white shirt open at the throat, and a crystal bowl full of sugar cubes stood beside his hip.
He picked up a cube and put it in his mouth, unhurried.
A scar ran through his left eyebrow and split it in two.
"Seven hundred million won," the man said. "Gone from my port account on the fourteenth. It went into an account at a bank in Guro, and the account is yours."
"I don't have an account in Guro," Do-hyun said.
His voice came out steadier than he felt.
"You have your name on one, your ID number, and a signature."
"Then somebody signed it," Do-hyun said.
"That's what a thief says."
The man crunched the sugar between his teeth and nodded at the gun.
The big man holding it lowered it a few centimeters.
He was a huge man with a crew cut and a grey suit one size too small.
He looked at Do-hyun without any interest at all.
On the desk, a phone began to buzz.
It was Do-hyun's phone.
He knew its cracked corner from across the room.
His eyes went to it and came straight back to the man's face.
The buzzing stopped.
The man had watched him look, and something moved in his face and was gone.
"Beom-su," he said.
The wardrobe put the gun in his belt, took Do-hyun's right hand, and pressed it flat against the arm of the chair.
The tape on that wrist had been cut.
He held the hand there with a palm the size of a plate.
"I'm Gu Woo-jin," the man said. "You know the name, or you wouldn't have been so careful to steal from me."
"I never heard of you."
"Everyone has heard of Gu Entertainment. Fewer know what pays for it."
He slid off the desk and crossed the floor without any hurry.
He took a small folding knife from his pocket and opened it with one thumb.
Do-hyun's stomach dropped to his knees.
"Mr. Gu," he said. "I didn't take your money."
"Then tell me who did."
The point of the knife found the nail of his index finger and slid underneath it.
It did not cut yet.
It only sat there against the soft pink skin, and Do-hyun could feel his own pulse beating against the steel.
"I have a very simple question," Gu Woo-jin said. "Who paid you, who held the account, and who is the man in the grey cap at the cash machine?"
"I don't know a man in a cap."
"Try again," Woo-jin said.
"I don't know."
The knife went in.
It went in a fraction of a centimeter, enough to lift the nail, and the pain was white and enormous.
Do-hyun's whole body bucked against the tape, and a sound tore out of him that he hated.
Blood ran over the pad of his finger and dripped on his jeans.
Woo-jin did not look away.
He watched Do-hyun's face with the quiet attention of a man reading small print.
"A name," he said.
Do-hyun breathed through his teeth.
There was a name.
There had been a name for three days, and it sat behind his teeth.
If he said it, the door in this room would open, and a car would take him home.
The man who owned that name would be waiting at the end of the ride.
"No," he said.
Woo-jin's eyes narrowed.
He drew the knife out slowly, wiped it clean on his own sleeve, and folded it shut.
"Beom-su. Bandage."
The wardrobe let go of the hand and went to a cabinet.
Do-hyun sat shaking in the chair, holding his bleeding finger against his chest.
Woo-jin picked a cube from the bowl and came back.
He stood close enough that Do-hyun smelled sugar and cedar and the iron of his own blood.
He lifted the cube between his thumb and finger and set it against Do-hyun's lower lip.
"Open."
"Go to hell," Do-hyun said.
"Open, kid. You're white as paper, and you're no use to me in a faint."
Do-hyun opened his mouth, because his head was swimming and his lip was split, and because he wanted to be somewhere else.
The cube went onto his tongue.
It was sweet enough to hurt, and it melted against the cut in his lip.
Woo-jin's thumb stayed there a heartbeat longer than it had to.
"Here is how this goes," he said. "I ask one more time."
"Say one name, and Beom-su drives you home tonight with an apology and a taxi fare."
The phone buzzed again on the desk.
Do-hyun did not turn his head.
"No," he said.
Woo-jin looked at him for a long moment.
Then he smiled, a small slow thing, the first expression his face had made.
"Then you live here," he said.
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