Dopamine Addiction - Chapter 22

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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22.
Heejoo rose from her seat with a composed expression. The door creaked open with a metallic screech.
It was a fairly bustling neighborhood—less a tourist destination than a place with the texture of lived-in life. Small shops occupied each block, and above them clustered residential buildings.
Liam glanced around before ducking into an alley. Heejoo quickly followed, asking as she caught up.
“Have you been here before?”
“Never.”
“Yet you walk without hesitation. Do you already know where we’re going?”
“Places like what we need are usually in the backalleys of busy districts. There—I see it.”
Liam stopped and gestured with his chin toward a storefront. It was a shop that sold prepaid phones.
“Wait here. No point in both of us being on CCTV.”
“Is there CCTV here?”
“There won’t be anything visible, but there will be something. They have insurance to maintain.”
“Go on, then.”
Heejoo nodded, and Liam strode toward the shop. He paused just as he reached for the door, then turned back to her. Heejoo gripped her bag tightly, her expression turning grave.
She watched as he approached her again, her knuckles whitening around the strap.
“What is it?”
For all she knew, this was a shop run by Russian mafia subordinates. There might be a warrant out for both of them.
Just as her anxiety reached its peak, Liam thrust his open palm toward her.
“Money.”
“Sorry?”
“Do you have any cash?”
……
For a moment, Heejoo’s eyes flashed with disbelief. Liam gave his blue bomber jacket a light flutter—indicating he had nothing on him.
Thinking back, he’d never had a bag since they first met. Up until now, she’d paid for nearly everything: taxi fares, motel rooms, meals.
Liam shrugged lightly.
“I came in such a hurry. Besides, a place like that probably won’t take cards anyway.”
Ah, right. This madman. The one who’d chased her from London to Seoul to San Francisco with nothing but the clothes on his back.
Heejoo’s eyes narrowed as the forgotten reality crashed back into focus. She couldn’t help it. She was the one who needed him.
“How much will you need?”
“I’ll know once I’ve looked.”
Heejoo pulled out her wallet and gauged the bills. The cash she’d prepared for the trip had grown thin. She peeled off roughly half and handed it to him.
“Will this be enough?”
“Let’s hope so.”
Liam stuffed the notes into his pocket and headed back toward the shop. Heejoo kept her eyes fixed on his retreating figure, half-worried he might bolt with the money.
Then her gaze drifted to her surroundings. Just one block into the alley, and the atmosphere had shifted drastically from the main street.
Graffiti whose meaning escaped her, piles of filthy garbage, a homeless man sprawled on the pavement.
Suddenly something bumped her from behind. She spun around in alarm to find a man in rags pushing a cart, his expression irritable.
“Move!”
Heejoo quickly pressed herself against the wall. The cart, loaded with a few donuts, rattled loudly as it passed in front of her.
The stench hit her nostrils like a punch, and the homeless man stopped in his tracks, fixing her with a sharp, hostile stare.
“Go back to your own damn country! Tax-thieving parasites!”
Heejoo’s breath came shallow and quick. Her heart hammered violently against her ribs. She wanted to say something in return but found herself paralyzed.
There was something uniquely terrifying about encountering hostility in a foreign land. Especially when it came from someone who had nothing left to lose.
……
The homeless man’s aggression swelled. He spat out his fury as if she had personally robbed him of something precious.
“Filthy immigrants! Get the hell out!”
Heejoo clenched her fists and hardened her jaw. She couldn’t let him see her fear. One sign of weakness and she’d become easy prey.
And then, just as she held her fragile composure together—
“Isn’t that something you should say only after you’ve paid a penny in taxes?”
A cold voice cut through the air like a blade.
The homeless man turned. Liam stood with one hand tucked casually into his trouser pocket, his head tilted at an angle, his expression utterly devoid of warmth.
A tall frame that demanded one to look up. Eyes stripped of all humanity. A voice as flat as winter stone.
The man’s bluster deflated instantly. He backed away hastily, shouting as he went.
“You—you all go back to your own damn country! Filthy immigrants!”
His cart rattled away across the pavement with a chaotic din. Liam watched his retreating figure before his gaze shifted to Heejoo.
“Are you alright?”
She looked at him with fresh eyes—seeing anew the tall frame and cold voice that had terrified the vagrant. It struck her as strangely unfamiliar.
Heejoo nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
“Well. You had to be.”
Liam murmured this almost to himself before handing her a mobile phone. It was a basic smartphone.
“I’ve already saved our numbers in each other’s contact lists.”
Heejoo examined the phone and saw the number displayed in the recent call log. She nodded, then took a deep breath and stepped forward with renewed confidence.
“Now, let’s find someone I know. Just follow me.”
Heejoo walked briskly ahead, only to stop abruptly. Liam, trailing a step behind, came to stand beside her.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Wait—where exactly are we?”
……
Liam’s face registered a moment of bewilderment before he broke into laughter. “Ha ha ha.” His shoulders shook as he bent double, taking a while before he straightened again.
The face that had been inches from hers suddenly seemed much farther away. Perhaps thirty centimeters.
Heejoo looked up at him with fresh eyes. Had he always been this tall?
“Tell me the address.”
At Liam’s words, Heejoo shook off her reverie and rifled through the mental filing cabinet in her mind. There she found a folder labeled “Noel.”
She recited a fairly specific sequence of words and numbers, then searched the address on her mobile phone.
The internet was excruciatingly slow. Not just slow—painfully, agonizingly slow.
Heejoo, who came from the land of speed itself—a nation with the country code 82, where everything moved at a sprint—felt her patience burning away.
Despite priding herself on her tolerance, she couldn’t wait for instant ramen to cook, for elevator doors to close, or for internet pages to load. Not for three minutes, not for seconds, not for dozens of seconds.
As she unconsciously shifted her weight from foot to foot, Liam struck up a conversation with a passing middle-aged woman. His pleasant face and courteous manner put her at ease, and she readily gave him directions.
Liam walked back toward Heejoo and spoke.
“Good news—it’s not far from here. About fifteen minutes on foot. Shall we walk?”
Heejoo glanced at the still-loading screen and nodded lightly, then pocketed the phone.
“Sure. Though I have to say, this is surprising.”
“What is?”
“I’d have pegged you as digital-first, but here you are—analog all the way.”
“Asking is faster than searching. And people tend to be kind to me.”
Well, yes, they would be. A handsome face, an engaging smile, that measured baritone, courteous manners—there was no reason they wouldn’t soften.
They just didn’t know there was a Grim Reaper sitting inside that handsome frame. They didn’t know he carried a scythe sharp enough to cut through bone.
“Let’s go.”
Liam started forward, then glanced back at Heejoo, who was still standing in place. One eyebrow rose slightly—a wordless question of why she wasn’t coming.
Heejoo thrust out her hand toward him with a sharp sound.
“Money.”
……
“Don’t you have change left? Did you at least get a receipt?”
Liam’s eyes narrowed in amusement.
“Who issues receipts at a place like that? That would defeat the whole purpose of paying in cash.”
“You’re not denying you have money left.”
Heejoo extended her hand further toward him. He scratched his temple and muttered something.
“Are you really worried I’d run off with it? Do I have so little credit with you?”
“I make it a rule never to mix money with anyone, even family.”
Liam chuckled and pulled several bills from his pocket. Heejoo checked the remaining amount and sighed. “It’s more expensive than I thought.”
An old model phone that can barely get signal, and now she was wondering if he’d been overcharged.
She gave him a suspicious once-over.
“I don’t need to check your pockets, do I?”
“Despite appearances, I’m worth quite a bit. The fact that you’re working me for free deserves some recognition.”
“It’s not exactly free though, is it? I’ve paid you fairly for your services.”
“Then who was it that passed out first and left me standing watch all night? Somehow I ended up with nothing but my own fingers to keep me company.”
“I already apologized for that. Are you always this grudge-holding?”
“Should I be expecting something tonight to make up for it?”
Liam’s words were half-jest, yet both of them knew they weren’t. His gaze lingered.
Once again, the world around them fell away as if they existed in a space all their own, the ambient noise of the street becoming distant and irrelevant.
Whenever he looked at her like that, Heejoo had no idea what expression to wear. Something churned in the depths of her chest.
Her mouth went dry. Heat rose to her face, and her pulse quickened. The moment she thought things had gone too far, Liam broke the silence first.
“It’s this way.”
He glanced at the street sign on the lamppost and turned right. Heejoo followed silently in his wake.
The invisible membrane that had enclosed them dissolved, and the two worlds merged back into one. A car stopped at a red light, and somewhere in the distance, a tram bell rang.
The two walked in silence for a while. Heejoo’s pace occasionally slowed, but the distance between her and Liam never widened.
Liam moved with ease, as though simply taking a leisurely stroll through a familiar neighborhood. Heejoo surveyed the surroundings with suspicious eyes.
“You really do know where we’re going, don’t you?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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