Three months ago, he’d been training for the national amateur finals. Now? Now he was training to break a loan shark’s jaw.

The fight that followed wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t like the movies. Geon-woo took a pipe to the ribs and heard something crack. Min-jae’s left eyebrow split open like a dropped egg. They fought back-to-back, using boxing footwork to dance through the wreckage of broken mirrors and overturned benches. When it was over, five of Choi’s men were unconscious, one was limping away, and the two bloodhounds were kneeling in a pool of sweat, blood, and shattered plaster.

Min-jae laughed—a wet, broken sound. “Still standing?”

Choi fell. The giant fell a moment later, Min-jae’s arm around his windpipe.

“We go home,” Geon-woo said. “We heal. And if someone else needs us…”

Min-jae stood. He was shorter than Geon-woo, but denser—a fireplug of muscle and quiet fury. His own story was simpler: a sister drowning in medical bills, a loan from the same snake. “Then we don’t think,” Min-jae said. “We bleed. Together.”

That was their contract. No lawyers. No cops. Just two bloodhounds, noses to the ground, tracking the scent of injustice through the back alleys of Incheon. The first fight was behind a fish market. Three of Choi’s collectors, all bulk and no technique. Geon-woo dropped the first with a liver shot that folded him like cardboard. Min-jae handled the second with a brutal right cross. The third ran—straight into a stack of crab traps. Easy.

Min-jae nodded slowly. “Then we run again.”

“You’re thinking too loud,” said Min-jae, wrapping his own hands across the bench. “I can hear you from here.”