“Don’t just stand there!”
A tremendous roar made her halt in her tracks.
“Hey! You son of a thief!”
Saebom, who had stopped, looked around to find the source of the voice. In the distance, she saw a man and a woman precariously coming down a hill road, locked in a chase.
The fugitive looked like a student around Saebom’s age, and the pursuer was a woman who appeared to be in her early twenties.
‘A thief?’
It seemed she had been the victim of a snatch theft. Saebom burned with a desire to help, but given the terrifying speed at which the other was running and the difference in their builds, it was a situation where if she charged in alone, she would likely be the one to get seriously hurt.
Saebom anxiously looked around to see if there was anyone to ask for help, stamping her feet, and just as she turned her head back to the front—
‘Huh?’
At the end of the downhill road where the chase was unfolding, there was a three-way junction. And Saebom was standing on the path that turned to the right.
She naturally expected the fugitive to run straight ahead. After all, he was running blindly forward while checking the pursuer’s movements behind him. But—
“Uh-oh?”
The man suddenly changed direction toward where Saebom was standing.
“Ack!”
He was so fast that she had no time to dodge. With a tremendous impact, Saebom lost her balance and fell backward, landing hard on her bottom.
The other party also lost his balance and staggered, but he quickly planted both hands on the ground, stabilized his center, and rose.
Just as the man’s gaze reached Saebom, as if belatedly trying to confirm what he had collided with—
“Hey!”
A shout filled with furious momentum once again echoed through the alley.
The fugitive muttered a low curse and started running again. Leaving the disheveled Saebom abandoned on the road.
With a dumbfounded face, Saebom looked down at the wound on her palm and discovered the bag that had been discarded on the ground in an even more miserable state than herself.
“Shit, my eggs.”
Saebom hurriedly opened the paper box containing the eggs. As expected, not a single one was intact; they were all broken.
The eggs Saebom had bought were the last remaining item at the convenience store. Even if she went back to buy more, there would be no stock left, and she didn’t even know the location of any other mart.
Even if she searched and found one, she didn’t want to go through such hardships in this chilly weather, and in an injured state at that.
Saebom fixed a terrifying glare on the back of the person who had crashed into her and run away.
‘Running away without even an apology?’
The pursuer was still coming down the hill road, but the fugitive was crossing the crosswalk of a two-lane road.
At this rate, it was obvious he would get away, but letting him go like that filled her with too much resentment.
The pedestrian signal was blinking rapidly, as if it would turn red at any moment.
Confirming that, Saebom tore open the mesh bag containing tangerines with tremendous force. And she grabbed one of the softer ones in her hand.
‘I may not look it, but I used to be a pitcher on a Little League team, you bastard.’
Recalling the pitching form she had learned as a child, Saebom took a wind-up pose. And so the tangerine left Saebom’s hand and flew quickly toward the man.
Thwack!
With a crisp sound, both Saebom and the fugitive’s movements stopped simultaneously.
‘Ah.’
A direct hit. Saebom was the most surprised by that fact.
‘Why did it have to be the back of his head……’
She had absolutely not been aiming for his head. She had intended to target his leg or buttocks, but the tangerine that left Saebom’s hand accurately struck the back of the man’s head. It even burst upon impact.
The man’s movement of bringing his hand to his head looked like slow motion in Saebom’s eyes.
Finally, when he successively confirmed the traces of some unknown moisture that had dampened his hair and the tangerine that had fallen at his feet—
“Nice! Hah, hah.”
Letting out rough breaths, the pursuer stopped beside Saebom and flashed a bright smile at her.
“You throw really well?”
Saebom couldn’t smile back at the words breathed out in admiration. Because the man standing across the road had turned to look at Saebom with a murderous gaze. He had the momentum to kill a person with just his eyes.
‘You.’
The fugitive raised his hand and pointed at Saebom. It was natural that she couldn’t hear his voice due to the distance. Strangely, however, the content was delivered vividly, as if he were speaking right beside her.
‘Stay right there and don’t move.’
Saebom tried her best to appear calm. She thought that since the pursuer was here, he wouldn’t be able to rashly come this way. Even if he did come, she assumed this person would take her side.
Until the pursuer continued with her next words, she had definitely thought so.
“It was fun watching the spectacle, but……”
She trailed off and smiled brightly at Saebom. It was a kind smile, but her somehow anxious eyes seemed to contain worry for the other party.
“I’ll clean up here, so hurry up and run away.”
“Huh?”
“If you get caught, you’ll be in big trouble, so I’m telling you to run.”
“Run away?”
Unable to understand the current situation, Saebom made a bewildered expression. With a somewhat troubled look on her face, she scratched her cheek once and then pointed somewhere with her chin.
“That thing is my younger brother.”
At the end of that direction stood the fugitive, emitting a terrifying presence.
“When he’s pissed, his temper is no joke—utterly foul.”
She added a blunt evaluation of her younger brother.
“He’s practically a mad dog, I tell you.”
‘Her younger brother?’
Flustered, Saebom looked at Doa in a half-stunned state and replayed the situation from moments ago.
They had been chasing each other as if they were mortal enemies. To think this was merely a sibling fight.
“You weren’t a victim of a snatch theft or something?”
“Snatch theft?”
“When you were chasing him from over there earlier, you called him a son of a thief……”
“Ah~ that.”
“……”
“Don’t tell me you threw that because you thought I was a victim of snatch theft?”
It wasn’t solely because of that reason, but since it had influenced her by more than half, Saebom nodded.
Doa, who had worn an expression of not understanding the situation, finally fully understood the situation and drew a smile tinged with awkwardness at her lips.
“It wasn’t a snatch theft…… That bastard got slapped in Jongno and tried to take out his misplaced anger on me, so he took my car keys and ran off, ruining my entire schedule.”
The moment Doa’s brief explanation ended, Saebom’s gaze dropped downward.
A tangerine that had spilled from the messily torn mesh bag was rolling around at her feet.
She had thrown the tangerine at Dohyeon without hesitation because she had thought he was a person who had done something bad and was running away.
It would be excessive to chalk up Saebom’s earlier action as simply punishing someone who had run away without apologizing for a collision. After all, it had been a collision that couldn’t be considered solely one party’s fault.
“I should apolo—”
Raising her head to check across the road, Saebom couldn’t finish her sentence and clamped her mouth shut.
As he waited for the signal to change, droplets presumed to be juice were dripping steadily from Dohyeon’s right hand as he glared at Saebom. It seemed he was clutching the burst tangerine. At that appearance, which was no different from a demon’s, a chill ran down her spine.
‘What do I do.’
The two-lane road was still quiet. Judging by his savage momentum, it seemed he would ignore the signal and rush over at any moment, but Dohyeon stood nailed to that spot as if steadfastly obeying the traffic light.
Just as Saebom’s pupils, unable to tear their gaze away from that figure, wavered unsteadily—
“Just run away.”
Once again, Doa’s voice urging her to flee reached Saebom’s ears as she tried to think of a way to resolve the situation.
“It’s not like you hit him with a stone, it’s just a tangerine. Just let it go as a minor incident.”
Doa put the items that looked intact, excluding the eggs, into the bag and handed it to Saebom, then gestured at Saebom’s attire with her chin.
“You happen to be wearing a mask and a hat. Your face is all covered anyway, so even if you pass each other on the street, you won’t recognize each other, so just go. I’ll try to appease him well.”
“But if he’s hurt somewhere……”
“Hurt? By that little tangerine?”
Doa looked at her as if that were absurd.
“If his head were the type to break from something like that, I would have broken it long ago.”
She added a joke, as if to keep Saebom’s heart from growing heavy, and looked toward the crosswalk as if checking her younger brother’s movements.
“He’s probably not hurt or in pain anywhere. He’s just in a bad mood. He was raised quite—no, very indulgently in our house, and he’s never been hit on the head by anyone.”
Clicking her tongue, Doa’s face was filled with displeasure. She turned her gaze back to Saebom and smiled brightly.
“You did this trying to help me. I’ll take responsibility, so hurry up and go.”
Reading the hesitation on Saebom’s face, Doa even gently pushed her back.
“The signal looks like it’ll change soon.”
Finally seeing the pedestrian signal change, Saebom ran just like that. Her body moved first naturally, not because she had thought it through with her head. It was survival instinct.