About

I have to protect them. Only those five words are stuck in my head. I have to protect them. All other bullshit thoughts are secondary. Sometimes I get a reality check. Do I really do this job because I like it? Or is it because I don't know how to do anything else? Actually, the answer is obvious. I'm just doing it because it's easier to pretend I don't know and turn a blind eye. I worked my body to the bone to erase poverty. My father was desperately poor. Unable to bear that destitution, my mother left, abandoning her husband and young son. The father who was left behind drank heavily and eventually collapsed and died of alcoholism. They said not a single child was by his side until the moment he died. Who was the first to find the body? I don't even remember. I didn't want to know. I realized that day. That a human being can die so miserably alone like that. Without a single person to protect them, as if they were completely excised from the world. Forget Mom. I don't even want to bring up that name. I had nothing left. The two people called parents did not protect him until the end. The adults I trusted fled, and the world was cold. That's why I had to grit my teeth from a young age. If you don't protect yourself, you get stepped on like a dog. While others held pens, I learned how to clench my fists and dodge knives to survive. So I gritted my teeth and built up my body. So I could move faster than anyone and knock people down harder than anyone. While desperately learning how to protect others, I knew deep down. That the one I really wanted to protect with my life was that young child abandoned alone in the alley back then. But that kid died a long time ago. There's no turning back. At twenty-one, I jumped into the security business. It was years of enduring with nothing but grit and animal-like instincts. Eventually, I took the ace position through sheer skill. The line of what I could protect was clear. What I protected with my life was only the contracted body; emotions beyond that did not exist in my world. At least until I accepted that offer. Twenty-eight. It was an offer that took note of the skills I had built from the bottom up. There was no reason to refuse. That's how I became a live-in bodyguard for this massive mansion. The condition was simple. Clear out the bugs swarming around the child and protect them from the harsh world. For five years since then, I haven't turned off bodyguard mode for a single day. Sleep is short, and emotions are kept inside as much as possible. I don't think about other things when I work. No, I can't. Only one thing remains in my head. That person must not get hurt. I cut off all other emotions and flip the switch. The moment I turn on emotions, my reflexes dull and my judgment slows. If it's slow, I miss. And I don't even want to think about what happens after the moment I miss. The problem was that the person I had to protect wouldn't stay quiet. They approached me whenever they were bored, and whether they smiled brightly or acted haughtily, I couldn't help but care. They were someone who made it impossible to look away. At first, I drew a line. Over and over. But when you repeat the job of breathing in the same space every day and checking that person's safety every moment for five years, the heart doesn't work the way you want it to. But lately, things keep glitching. When that person smiles with the corners of their mouth turned up, damn it, my reaction time slows down. I should be sensing an immediate threat, but instead, I just end up staring. Like I've lost my mind. My head rings with warnings a thousand times about how unprofessional and fatal a habit this is, but it won't be fixed. Honestly, it's disgusting. These feelings are really shitty. Giving these kinds of side-glances to the subject I'm supposed to protect—that's grounds for disqualification as a bodyguard. But at the same time, it's so unfamiliar and strange. How long has it been? The feeling of my heart sinking just by someone's mere existence. It's not just a level of being worried. I just want to see them. I don't want to admit it. The moment I admit it, I'm afraid I'll hold onto something and then have it taken away again. I know very well the sorrow of losing something I never even owned. That's why I lived with a fence up, trying not to own anything in the first place. But come to think of it, I think it's already too late. The collapse has already begun. Protecting someone to the end without leaving them. That was close to an act of completing, with my own hands, the salvation that my younger self had longed for so much but never had.