Don’t Mess with the Puppy! - Vol.1 Chapter 2 Part 18
When Heeseong was young, he was particularly weak.
If his food wasn’t meticulously and cleanly prepared, he would vomit everything he ate, and he was often taken to the hospital. However, Heeseong’s poor family couldn’t even take him to the hospital properly, so Heeseong grew weaker day by day.
On the other hand, Heeseong’s younger brother was healthy. Unlike Heeseong, who couldn’t eat well, he grew up quickly and even caught up to his older brother’s height early on.
One day, his father and younger brother left the house with large luggage. His mother held Heeseong in her arms and hid her expression.
“Heeseong, our Heeseong…”
Heeseong saw his mother crying, but he didn’t care because he knew she was usually tearful. Still, his mother crying was always sadder than him being sick.
His mother gave him an abundance of the snacks she always warned him about and said.
“Heeseong, if you’re hungry, eat this… and wait at home.”
“Okay!”
Heeseong was excited, childishly only looking at the snacks. Even though he would often vomit after eating just a few bites, he was excited at the thought of being able to eat the precious snacks to his heart’s content at home without his scary father.
At that moment, his father yelled at his mother as if scolding her.
“What are you doing? Hurry up and come out!”
“Honey…”
“Come out. That one is too weak to take with us!”
Heeseong stayed still inside the house, knowing that his father always found him unsatisfactory.
His sobbing mother kept stroking Heeseong’s cheeks, left an apology, and left the house. The sound of the truck driver and his father arguing for a few words was heard, and finally, even the noisy sound of the truck engine faded away.
After that, his family didn’t come back to get Heeseong.
They didn’t come back on the day Heeseong ate the snacks to his fill and vomited, nor on the day he saved snacks for his younger brother. Even though he wanted to call his mother, there was no properly functioning device at home.
The poor neighborhood where Heeseong lived also quickly became quiet. People packed their bags and left as if they were being chased, and the red letters “demolition” were written on the walls. Even when Heeseong went out to the streets during the day, the village with X marks sprayed on the walls was still. When he went out with a few coins due to hunger, the supermarket he often visited was closed, and soon the electricity at home was cut off.
There was little Heeseong could do alone. He tried to go far to seek help, but a man with a bulging belly tried to forcibly take the pale Heeseong away. Terrified, Heeseong barely managed to run back home and curled up in a corner.
“…Mom told me to wait.”
After that, Heeseong started waiting for his family indefinitely. He transformed into a puppy to conserve his energy. In fact, there was nothing much he could do without money.
After a few days passed and he lost the strength to move, someone barged into the house.
“What’s with this mutt? Is it dead?”
“Isn’t it a dog shapeshifter?”
Gangsters wearing shoes entered Heeseong’s house and strolled around. Among them was his brother. When Heeseong first saw his brother, he looked younger and more ordinary, but his clothes were exactly the same as a gangster’s attire.
The gangsters turned the eyeballs of the skinny, nearly dead puppy this way and that.
“This one is still alive?”
“What? That tiny thing survived until now?”
The gangsters were going to leave Heeseong alone, but for some reason, his brother carried Heeseong in his arms and took him. It was for a strange reason, saying it reminded him of his own childhood.
After eating for a few days there, Heeseong was finally able to regain consciousness.
Heeseong, who had barely turned back into a human, asked with a dry mouth.
“What about Mom?”
In response to the question, an elderly man next to his brother clicked his tongue and said, “Oh my.”
His brother flicked Heeseong’s dry cheek and bitterly explained.
“Listen well, you were abandoned. Understand?”
“……”
“What should we do with this one? Just raise him? He’s pretty, though.”
Heeseong stayed still in that spot, no matter what his brother said.
He didn’t cry. He had avoided thinking that he had been abandoned by his family all this time, but he accepted it calmly as if it was a moment he would face someday, like graduating from school.
Having graduated from a certain point in life, he had also learned something.
If you’re sick and weak, you get abandoned by the pack.
His brother told the organization that Heeseong would be useful and took him in. Other organization members viewed the weak Heeseong unfavorably, but Heeseong always tried to make himself useful.
He tried not to appear weak to anyone and desperately hid his sickness. He followed the fighting dogs that didn’t easily yield to the world in speech and behavior and hid his most vulnerable side even from his brother.
As time passed, Heeseong became an adult. During that time, Heeseong did his best with the efforts he could make in the environment given to him.
However, Heeseong was abandoned again. Because his value decreased as he didn’t act the way his brother wanted. In the first place, it was someone who wouldn’t recognize his value anyway.
Falling into despair, Heeseong kept having nightmares even while unconscious.
The nightmares tormented Heeseong with a mix of various terrible memories. Someone knocking on the door of Heeseong’s house where he was left alone as if to break it, someone approaching in black and beating Heeseong, or forcibly pulling his hand.
“Heeseong. You can just endure a little, can’t you?”
In the terrible nightmare, he also faced his brother. Heeseong stood in front of him and shed tears, hating reality.
***
It’s the quietest night since living with the puppy. Yoon Chi-young was looking at Heeseong, who was curled up on the bed. Unlike usual, his expression was cold and subdued.
He found the puppy a little late, contrary to his expectations.
Fortunately, he had put surveillance on Park Gun-tae, so he was able to quickly follow Kwon Ki-hyuk’s trail, but the puppy was already covered in wounds.
Yoon Chi-young hadn’t anticipated that Kwon Ki-hyuk would covet Heeseong to that extent. He thought Kwon Ki-hyuk would restrain himself, seeing the state of his family, as his father was going to prison soon anyway. But Kwon Ki-hyuk turned a blind eye to reality as if struggling, and eventually took Heeseong far away.
It was fortunate that Yoon Chi-young searched the motel he arrived at and found Heeseong. Otherwise, he didn’t know what would have happened to the puppy. Just thinking about it made Yoon Chi-young feel unpleasant, and he furrowed his brow. Losing control of his emotions, black wolf ears popped up on his head, and his canines protruded painfully, piercing his own lips.
“……”
Heeseong, perhaps because his injuries were less severe or because he had some consciousness left, stubbornly transformed into his human form when he briefly regained consciousness, then collapsed again. But in Yoon Chi-young’s eyes, Heeseong still looked like a small and soft puppy.
Yoon Chi-young, who had been stroking the white ears that popped up among the black hair, wiped the cold sweat from Heeseong’s forehead. Perhaps because he kept having nightmares, Heeseong let out groans of suffering.
“Mo… m…”
At that moment, Heeseong mumbled something like sleep talk. Yoon Chi-young, who had already been listening to his sleep talk for a while, carefully touched his gentle cheek. Seeing him return injured like this after being preciously raised made his chest feel stuffy and torn.
As warmth touched his cheek, Heeseong mumbled as if whimpering.
“I… I’m not sick…”
“……”
“Take me too… I won’t be sick…”
Yoon Chi-young’s brow contorted as if in pain. Wolves are originally taught not to show negative emotions on their faces, but this time, it couldn’t be helped. From Heeseong’s words, he could understand a little bit of the suffering the abandoned puppy had endured.
Yoon Chi-young, who had been quietly looking down at Heeseong, spoke coldly, unlike himself.
“Who’s going to take you?”
“…Ugh…”
“You have to live here with me forever now.”
At the resolute words, Heeseong trembled with his eyes tightly closed. He must be wandering in a painful nightmare, but he also reached out and tightly grasped Yoon Chi-young’s sleeve.
Yoon Chi-young quietly looked at that hand and tidied the black hair covering Heeseong’s forehead. Then, just this once, he whispered much more gently.
“You just stay as a useless puppy.”
“……”
“A well-fed puppy with a bad personality.”
As if those words were somehow sorrowful, Heeseong’s expression crumbled as if he was about to cry. However, he couldn’t wake up and fell asleep, curling up his body even more. In the dim room, Heeseong’s body lying on the wide bed looked particularly small.
Yoon Chi-young held Heeseong in his arms as usual and wiped away the tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyes. As the warm embrace touched him, perhaps feeling a sense of security, Heeseong stopped sleep talking and fell into a deep sleep.
Swish.
Confirming that Heeseong had fallen asleep, Yoon Chi-young quietly got up from his seat.
He didn’t want to leave the sick puppy, but he remembered something he had to do. He was thinking of preparing a special gift for the puppy. Yoon Chi-young quietly put on his coat and sat in front of the puppy.
“I’ll be right back.”
Yoon Chi-young, who spoke softly, kissed the puppy’s small head and left. It was late at night outside, but he didn’t care. It was the time Yoon Chi-young was active anyway.
***
