a Gangster Return To Highschool, Chapter 03
Chapter 03
The funeral was held in the basement of the same building as the hospital.
Chrysanthemum wreaths filled the funeral parlor and overflowed into the corridor. Since Kim Deuk-pal had cut ties with his family after joining the organization, there were no relatives at the funeral, but there were plenty of mourners, suggesting he hadn't lived poorly.
All with fierce or cold expressions, they were undoubtedly gangsters. Even rival factions and organizations from neighboring areas had come to pay their respects, gathering in a way that would have been difficult under normal circumstances. Although they usually fought or were at odds when they met, today they quietly raised their glasses in tribute to Kim Deuk-pal.
Even on the second day of the funeral, the atmosphere remained as subdued as the first day. However, when the boy in hospital attire was brought in, the mournful atmosphere quickly turned.
“That bastard! That son of a bitch!”
A gang member with the size of a bear slammed the table and stormed out, but other members held him back. However, it wasn't to protect the boy but to prevent the funeral from getting chaotic, so the looks they gave the boy were far from kind.
The gang members gathered around the boy whom Kim Deuk-pal had tried to save. The boy was pitiable and unsightly. His emaciated body, hunched posture, shoulders frozen in a perpetual cringe, and his long bangs covering most of his face as he kept his gaze fixed to the ground gave him a gloomy appearance.
He was the complete opposite of the solid, imposing Kim Deuk-pal. The thought that Kim Deuk-pal had died trying to save such a boy made the gang members clench their fists in anger.
Kim Dong-soo shoved the boy towards the altar. As the boy awkwardly stood in front of the incense burner, staring blankly at Kim Deuk-pal's portrait, Kim Dong-soo kicked the boy's calf. With a sharp intake of breath, the boy dropped to his knees, banging them on the floor with a thud. Kim Dong-soo coldly ordered:
"Pray."
The boy, kneeling, looked up at Kim Deuk-pal's portrait as if nailed to the spot.
Still dazed, his vacant expression fixed on the photo, harsh words erupted around him. "Pray, you bastard! Our boss, our boss tried to save a piece of shit like you!"
"Our boss got into an accident trying to save a worthless kid like you! And where the hell are your parents, huh?"
But the boy seemed deaf to all this, his eyes locked on the portrait. Before he knew it, drool was about to drip from his open mouth when he suddenly stood up.
"I need to see... the body... with my own eyes..."
Muttering under his breath, the boy lunged at the altar decorated with flowers. With strength from who knew where in his skinny frame, he dashed forward, causing the gang members to shout urgently:
"Grab him!"
The boy stepped on the incense burner, pushed aside the portrait, and dug into the chrysanthemums, inserting his fingernails into the cracks of the board. The body was in the morgue, but the boy was desperate, not thinking of such details. However, he was quickly caught by the collar and dragged down by the gang members.
"You ungrateful bastard, defiling the dead!"
They pinned the boy down, his back pressed into the ground. Even under the weight of several large men, the boy thrashed wildly, trying to crawl towards where he thought the body lay. But when sobs came from behind him, he suddenly stopped resisting.
"He's dead, he's gone, the boss..."
These were subordinates handpicked by Kim Deuk-pal. They were not the type to play around with this, nor were they ones to cry easily.
The spirit of Kim Deuk-pal, now within the boy, met the gaze of his portrait lying discarded on the floor. There was no more denying it.
His intuition was right. Kim Deuk-pal had died from excessive bleeding caused by a traffic accident while trying to save the boy from committing suicide on a rainy day.
The surviving soul finally accepted the death of his body.
Name: Song I-heon. Gender: Male. Age: 18. Blood Type: A.
This was all Kim Deuk-pal learned about the boy, and even that was from the personal details hanging over the hospital bed.
Song I-heon was strange. He was in a comfortable single room, and when he was dragged to Kim Deuk-pal's funeral a few days ago, hospital security came looking for him with batons. Plus, the doctors were unusually kind to him, suggesting he wasn't without guardians, but no one actually came to see him. Thanks to this, Kim Deuk-pal didn't arouse any suspicion.
"Ugh..."
"Ugh..."
As he shifted, a sharp pain burst from his back. Kim Deuk-pal bit his lip while pressing the button for the painkiller infusion on the IV.
Song I-heon had suffered a spinal injury and broken ribs from falling off an overpass, which required surgery and casting. When he first regained consciousness, he was too disoriented to notice, but as he got into the elevator with the help of security, the aftereffects of the surgery hit him, causing Kim Deuk-pal to faint. Even when he woke up with IVs hanging all over, he was still in Song I-heon's body.
As the pain subsided slightly, he reached for the hand mirror lying close by. Kim Deuk-pal clicked his tongue, appraising the face reflected in the round mirror. It was still an unfamiliar face.
"Tsk, not exactly a manly man."
The bare face revealed by sweeping back the long bangs covering his eyes was, as Kim Deuk-pal noted, rather delicate. With light brown eyes and hair, the pale skin was due to a lack of pigment, but that wasn't something Kim Deuk-pal cared about.
A man should have tanned skin, a strong jawline, and thick muscles to be considered handsome - not the slender, almost irritating features of Song I-heon, which didn't align with Kim Deuk-pal's taste.
"Ugh, might as well feed a family with this face..."
Still not fully accepting that this was his body, Kim Deuk-pal turned his slender chin left and right, clicking his tongue as if looking at someone else.
While Kim Deuk-pal consciously critiqued Song I-heon's appearance, his mind was on edge about the time. It was time for his body to be cremated at the funeral.
Despite having confirmed his death, Kim Deuk-pal couldn't accept the idea of his body being burned away so indifferently. Not knowing what had happened to Song Iheon's soul, if his own body was gone, it would be troublesome for Song I-heon's soul to return later.
Taking over the young body of Song I-heon was something his conscience wouldn't allow. He needed to give the body back to Song I-heon's soul, but then what? Would his own soul be left to wander aimlessly?
While Kim Deuk-pal was lost in these thoughts, he didn't hear the hospital room door opening. Suddenly, he sensed a cold atmosphere and looked up to see a middleaged woman standing there with her arms crossed, her eyes clearly showing how fed up she was. As Kim Deuk-pal met her gaze, which was laden with contempt, he furrowed his brows in displeasure. The woman spoke up.
"You don't even greet me anymore."
Only then did Kim Deuk-pal realize his mistake and tried to stand up, clutching his cast. Despite the unusual pain from his broken ribs, he ignored it and bent over at a ninety-degree angle.
"Hello."
The person he found most difficult to deal with was a woman, especially one around his age. And since she seemed to be Song I-heon's mother, Kim Deuk-pal was even more on edge.
Despite his attempt to show respect according to the strict hierarchy of the gang world, the problem was that he was in Song I-heon's body. Such formal respect from Song I-heon's form only provoked irritation. The woman's eyebrows twitched.
"Are you protesting?"
Kim Deuk-pal flinched at the sharp, mocking remark that seemed to cut through to his scalp. The woman didn't show any sympathy for Song I-heon's condition but shot back at him directly.
"Do you or your mother hold some grudge against me? Why are you both so eager to torment me? Going there in the dead of night... Ha, did your mother tell you to do this? Thinking if the Chairman hears about this, he'll come to see you two? Is this all for attention?"
The middle-aged woman is not Song I-heon's mother. Judging by how she belittles Song I-heon's mother while respectfully addressing the "Chairman," she is likely someone hired by the Chairman's side.
Realizing this, Kim Deuk-pal straightened up. Not knowing the full story, he had nothing specific to say, but he judged that there was no need to lose ground in this situation.
"Dealing with your mother's messes is bad enough, why are you like this too?
What's the problem? You don't do anything right-"
The woman, who had been harshly criticizing, froze in shock when Song I-heon stood up straight. Normally, Song I-heon walked with a hunched back, so he was eyelevel with the woman, but now, being taller, he could look down on her when standing straight.
"You, you..."
The woman was taken aback when the usually timid and cowering Song I-heon dared to look down at her. However, the cold gaze from Song I-heon, who brushed his long bangs aside to reveal his noble features, silenced her as it exuded the aura of Kim Deuk-pal, who had been in the organization for about 30 years.
"How dare you look at an adult like that, with no manners..."
But the woman, accustomed to treating Song I-heon harshly, didn't back down easily. She stared daggers at Song I-heon, murmuring threats, but her voice trembled like a goat's bleat, which she found embarrassing, so she chewed on her lips.
"I'll send Driver Park for your discharge, so handle it yourself."
She threw the shoulder bag she had brought onto Song I-heon's chest. When the impact hit his cast, making Song I-heon wince, she was startled but didn't turn her back; she quickly backed away and then, once turned, left the room with large strides.
She slammed the door with such force that it shook, perhaps as a final show of pride. "...That woman has a nasty temper."
Kim Deuk-pal, left behind, scratched his head and muttered. He was the only one who had visited Song I-heon since the accident a few days ago, but he didn't feel like chasing after her. Instead, he understood why Song I-heon might have considered jumping off the overpass if he had to deal with such a woman all his life.
Wincing from the slight pain in his ribs, Kim Deuk-pal turned over the shoulder bag on the bed. It felt heavy due to the cast, but besides underwear and toiletries, several college entrance exam workbooks and a tablet PC fell out.
"Oh-."
Since his smartphone was broken in the accident, Kim Deuk-pal was relieved to find the tablet. Although he had received tutoring from a specialist in Daechi-dong, in this day and age, he knew how to use a tablet for online lectures.
Despite the difficulty of learning new technology at forty-seven, with the patience his subordinates showed him, which they wouldn't even show their own parents, repeating the same content about a hundred times, Kim Deuk-pal confidently opened the tablet's case cover. The screen lit up as he opened the cover.
"Hmm."
He thought he would handle it without issues since it was from the same company as his old tablet, but he was met with the obstacle of the lock screen. After trying a random number and receiving a warning, Kim Deuk-pal hesitated to touch it further, fearing he might lock himself out completely. He ended up in a standoff with the lock screen, unsure of what to do next.
Kim Deuk-pal, irritated by the relentless passage of time, brushed back his bangs. His long bangs lifted and then settled back, covering half his face.
"...Huh?"
For a moment, as if to confirm what he had just seen, Kim Deuk-pal lifted his bangs and blinked.
"What's this?"
The screen lock had been undone. While he stared blankly at the screen, it went dark again, but when the lock screen reappeared, Kim Deuk-pal, just in case, covered his face with his bangs. The face ID unlocked, and the background screen appeared.
"What, am I some kind of two-faced man?"
Once he understood the mechanism of the unlock, Kim Deuk-pal grumbled in disappointment and swiped the screen.
The tablet was tidy. The few apps installed were typical for kids that age - online lectures, flash games, and webtoons. Among them, the most notable was a diary app.
"So, this is what was locked."
He pulled out the integrated table from the hospital bed, rested his elbows on it, and opened the diary app. Adjusting to a comfortable position, he began reading in earnest.
It was December 27, several days after the pedestrian bridge accident, and the diary naturally opened to the page written on December 20, which was recent.
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