Dane steps outside the hospital and sits at a desk in the garden where patients are walking around. But Dane has no idea what is about to happen next.
Sitting with his head bowed, he looks up after a few minutes and is terrified to see a group of thuggish boys surrounding him.
"Wh–who are... yo–you all... standing so close around me?" Dane stammers, asking them.
"Come with us, you scoundrel. After beating up our friends, how can you sit here peacefully enjoying the fresh air?"
They grab Dane by his collar and drag him along. Dane does not want to go with them at all, but they forcibly take him.
They push him into a van, blindfold his eyes, and tie both his hands. All Dane can see is darkness, and the fear inside him grows even more.
"Help... help me, these people are kidnapping me–"
Before Dane can finish his plea, they shove a handkerchief into his mouth, silencing him.
The van starts moving. Inside the van, one boy sits next to Dane, while three others sit across from him. The one beside him moves closer and places a hand on Dane's shoulder.
Dane feels alarmed, fearing they might beat him up, and wonders where they are taking him.
"Was it really you who single-handedly beat up my boys last night?" Dane quickly shakes his head because last night he didn't beat anyone—he himself was brutally beaten.
The boy sitting by the window across from Dane speaks up.
"Those jerks must have gotten drunk and fought among themselves," he says, making the boy next to him nod in agreement.
"Yeah, that seems likely because looking at this chick, it doesn't seem like he can fight anyone. He's trembling just from seeing us."
They all laugh and chat amongst themselves, but for Dane, there's nothing funny about this.
He is trembling with fear, unable to understand what's happening as his mouth, eyes, and hands are all restrained.
"Should I kick the guy sitting in front of me? But what if I anger him and he kills me instead..." Dane thinks to himself.
Suddenly, the van halts abruptly, causing Dane to hit his head on the window. That's when he realizes he was sitting by the window.
But what's the use of realizing it now when they've already brought him to their destination?
The silence around him grows, and Dane senses that all of them have gotten out of the van. In the eerie quiet, his heart beats loudly.
Then, suddenly, a hand reaches inside, grabbing a fistful of his hair and yanking him out of the van. Even in pain, he cannot scream because of the cloth stuffed in his mouth.
Dane feels someone's grip tightening on his hair as they drag him to a spot and throw him down.
Then, the sound of laughter surrounds him—there must be at least fifty people around.
Finally, the cloth is removed from Dane's mouth, and the blindfold is taken off his eyes, but his hands remain tied.
As Dane blinks to adjust his vision, he sees a large crowd of bulky men standing and sitting around him. None of them look ordinary judging by their rough appearances.
Dane's eyes fall on a stout man with a belly like a balloon and one golden tooth. His name is K, the leader of the gang.
"Why did you beat up my boys?" K asks, playing with a ring engraved with the letter K on his index finger.
"I didn't hit anyone. I can't even kill a mosquito, so how could I beat up someone?" Dane answers, his voice trembling as if he's about to cry.
"Haha, look at this kid. He's already crying just by looking at me. But my boys are in the hospital, in a coma. Someone's got to pay for this, right?" K smirks, glancing at his men.
At that moment, Dane drops to his knees, begging for mercy. "I swear I didn't hit anyone. Please let me go. My sister is in the hospital."
K chuckles darkly but signals to his men that Dane isn't to be let off so easily.
The men start beating Dane mercilessly. After two heavy blows to the head with baseball bats, Dane loses consciousness.
"Did he die?" K asks his men when he notices blood oozing from Dane's head and his lifeless position.
One of the boys approaches Dane, checking his breathing with a finger under his nose.
"He's breathing. That means he's alive."
Hearing this, everyone, including K, sighs in relief. They hadn't meant to kill Dane. Their real goal was to beat him so badly that, like his sister, he would fall into a coma and remain bedridden.
But even K didn't know who had ordered this because the party giving the instructions had kept their identity unknown.
After confirming Dane was alive, a few boys kicked him a few more times before dumping him back at the hospital and even paying for his treatment.
Dane received six stitches on his head, and the doctors declared him in a coma, with no certainty of when he would wake up.
Three days pass, and Dane remains in a coma. During these three days, a lot has happened. Some people came and took Liya away from the hospital.
They were not relatives who could care for the siblings, so when Dane fell into a coma, they took advantage of the situation and kidnapped Liya.
The hospital staff couldn't figure out how Liya was taken because it happened in the darkness of the night, and by morning, she was no longer in her ward.
Although the hospital reported the incident to the police, little action was taken, as if the police were complicit. The situation was becoming more complex with every passing moment.
And then, on the fourth day, Dane suddenly sits up, cracking his neck. But the one who wakes up isn't Dane—it's Jeren, because Dane is still in a coma.
Jeren stretches his stiff body as he gets off the bed and walks to the window, peering outside while taking a deep breath.