“You have two hours,” Dae-seong said, standing up. “Wipe So-ri’s mother’s debt. Leave the city. If you don’t, I won’t call the police. I’ll call the men who killed me. And I’ll tell them you were the informant.”
Seok froze. How could this loser know that?
Dae-seong (as Yoon-jae) didn’t kneel. He stood up, dusted off his pants, and said, “Your laces are fine. Your posture, however, is a disaster. You lead with your chin. A ten-year-old girl could knock you out.”
Dae-seong looked down. He had small, soft hands. Knuckles uncalloused. No dragon tattoo winding up his forearm. He scrambled for a mirror in a nearby locker and saw a face that was not his own. Round, terrified eyes. A pimple on his chin. The face of Lee Yoon-jae, a 17-year-old nobody. high school return of a gangster
“I think,” Kim Dae-seong said, feeling the boy’s heart beat alongside his own, “I’ll try being Lee Yoon-jae for a while. The real one. The one you deserve.”
He woke to the smell of cheap disinfectant, stale ramen, and teenage sweat. He was sitting at a plastic desk, the surface carved with half-hearted hearts and the words "Mr. Park sucks." A boy in a crumpled uniform was shaking him. "Yoon-jae! Dude! Wake up, Mr. Kang is gonna murder you!"
A strange, hollow laugh escaped Yoon-jae’s lips. The Crow had been killed. But the Crow had also landed on a new, very uncomfortable perch. “You have two hours,” Dae-seong said, standing up
On the first day of Dae-seong’s possession, Seok sauntered over, flanked by his goons. “Yoon-jae. My laces. Now.”
The blade sank into her shoulder. She crumpled, blood soaking her white uniform shirt.
Lee Yoon-jae was, by all accounts, a ghost. He was a scholarship kid at the elite Hansung High School, a place where chaebol heirs and politician sons sharpened their future fangs. Yoon-jae’s purpose was to be invisible, to suffer the daily bullying of the school’s self-proclaimed king, the vicious and petty Kang Seok, heir to a construction giant. If you don’t, I won’t call the police
Min-ho was expelled and charged as an adult for attempted murder. His father’s empire crumbled.
He didn’t kill Min-ho. That would be too easy, too much like the old him. Instead, he grabbed Min-ho by the hair, forced him to look at So-ri’s face, and whispered, “You see that blood? You just signed your father’s death warrant. And yours.”