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Baek Seongjun knew he was a dog.
He was born a mutt. Too Korean for Japan and too Japanese for Korea. A fatherless mongrel. The son of a whore who sought his life’s meaning in a sport he’d been set up to fail at.
The first man he trusted was his coach. The first man he trusted lied to him, stole from him, and hurt the only person Seongjun had: His mother.
Seongjun killed him. It was an act of self-defense. He was sixteen years old.
After that, through rage-fueled happenstance, Seongjun became an attack dog. A little mercenary prodigy for the yakuza to send here and there, knowing that no work was too dirty for a disgraced nobody like Baek Seongjun. Or, sorry - like Waraioni. An optimist would point to the nickname as a sign of respect. Seongjun would dismiss it as an excuse his superiors used so they didn’t have to pronounce his foreign name. (He’d never felt comfortable localizing it. His mother had, on the family paperwork. It hurt him, a little, to see that strange name on her grave. She couldn’t even have the dignity of her own name in death.)
No, the clan boss didn’t fucking respect his little oni. He liked having a useful, vicious dog who wouldn’t think twice about any job handed to him, because thinking too much brought back painful memories for the boy behind the laughing demon mask.
Seongjun didn’t understand. He put his trust in the boss. He did everything he was told. He never asked for much. The only real request he made was that be be allowed to run his own rough-and-tumble little gang as he pleased. (Those guys...they were the first and only true friends Seongjun ever had. How pathetic was that.)
So why the hell couldn’t the boss have gotten someone else to destroy Seongjun’s last thin, fraying hope of having a family?
And, really. Maybe Seongjun wouldn’t have done what he did if his boss hadn’t found the nerve to chastise Seongjun for being upset.
Seongjun slaughtered him. It was an act of revenge. He was eighteen years old.
He became a stray after that. Homeless. Jobless. A wanted criminal - not for all the innocent people he’d killed, but for the one bastard who deserved to have his life taken from him. A target for any passing gangster to take their anger out on. An alcoholic. (It was easy enough to buy booze. Stress had aged him far beyond his years.)
But even a stray wants to live. After a time hiding in alleyways and licking his wounds, Seongjun sought a new life in what should have been a homeland for him. And so the dirty, scraggly mutt boarded a smuggling ship to Korea.
And it was on that ship that he met his master.
Captain. Sir. Boss. 244. Lee Jinho. Whatever his fucking name was. It was remarkable to Seongjun how he could spend so many years with someone and still understand so little about him.
The captain said he admired Seongjun’s fighting prowess. He said that was why he wanted them working together. But...he made no use of Seongjun as a fighter. He never asked Seongjun to help enforce order on the ship. He never told Seongjun to act as his guard on land. He just kept Seongjun around, wiling the days away with him and making odd comments at him that Seongjun didn’t know how to read.
The first clue to the captain’s intentions came from the mouths of his crew. It’s the first time I’ve seen the captain concerned for someone else’s well-being. He must really care for you.
Maybe he realized Seongjun was onto him. The captain got more bold. It started with the muzzle of his gun pressed to Seongjun’s forehead, as part of what the captain called a playful joke. You know how jealous I get, don’t you, guys? Haha. (The horrified expressions on his crew told Seongjun that they didn’t, in fact, know.)
The captain finally put his chips on the table on a sunny day, lounging on a balcony with Seongjun and watching the whales surface from beneath the waves.
Seongjun. When we get to Korea, don’t go off on your own. Work with me.
Jokingly, Seongjun agreed - so long as he got the captain’s boat as payment.
To his shock, the captain agreed without hesitation. On a condition that Seongjun wouldn’t truly understand the significance of until much later: You have to become the kind of person I want.
When the captain told Seongjun to stop being so distant with him, Seongjun made two mistakes. First: He refused. Second: He told the captain why he was refusing. He admitted he couldn’t trust people anymore, no matter how friendly they were to him. He didn’t want to get hurt again.
Ironically, that was probably what put a knife in Seongjun’s stomach.
The captain’s hand was almost gentle, a warm and reassuring weight on Seongjun’s back, even as he slid the knife deeper into Seongjun’s guts. His voice was soft as he demanded to know how far Seongjun was willing to go.
Seongjun ran from him. It was an act of desperation. He was nineteen years old.
He was taken to the pound. Rather than sulk about it, Seongjun used his time in prison to better himself. He’d been given a second chance at life and he was going to use it. Baek Seongjun was going to take what the world owed him, no matter how low he had to scrape to do it.
All he wished was that there was a better avenue to the life he wanted. But what other options did he have? He was a stray once again, turned loose in a strange country without a friendly face to be seen. A penniless illegal immigrant with nothing to his name but the shirt on his back.
Heh. It was time to return that shirt to its rightful owner, he supposed.
The captain looked surprised to see him. It didn’t escape Seongjun’s notice, though, that the captain had been keeping tabs on him enough to know that he’d been released. That was promising.
The captain was ready for a fight. He wasn’t ready for Seongjun to fall to his knees and beg to be taken back. Seongjun gave the man standing over him permission to use him however he wanted, so long as he could give Seongjun what he needed in return.
Lee Jinho wasn’t normal. Seongjun knew that much. He was soulless. A sadistic sociopath who saw humans as animals to be tamed for labor or slaughtered for feed. So, Seongjun concluded, it was best to position himself as Jinho’s docile lapdog. It was clearly what Jinho wanted, and besides - you didn’t slit your own pet’s throat.
At least, normal people didn't.
After so many years, Seongjun had grown comfortable. Seongjun had done as he was told and Jinho had kept his promises. Baek Seongjun, the pathetic little mutt, was living a life he could only dream of in his childhood. He was famous. He was adored. He was paid. He was taken care of. This was what life was supposed to be. This was what Seongjun damn well deserved after suffering for so long.
Nothing had changed. So why was his master turning on him?
Jinho had warned him, way back when. If we work together, one of us is going to end up dead. Is that okay with you? He’d warned him. But...but that was just Jinho. He said crazy shit like that. He liked to see Seongjun afraid of him, from time to time. It was his way of having fun.
Seongjun had done nothing wrong. So why was the life he’d struggled so much for crumbling around him?
Seongjun had done nothing wrong. So why was everyone he’d worked so hard to please turning their backs on him?
Seongjun had done nothing wrong. So why was there a gun in his face?
He had to laugh. A final gift from Lee Jinho, huh? That was so like him.
Seongjun died at his command. It was an act of pointless, petty violence. He was twenty-four years old.