Chapter 296
Chapter 296
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 296
Chapter Title: [Thousand Stream Emperor Side Story] Making a Name (2)
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Clang— claaang—
Teka waited. For that Easterner to come crashing down in misery.
With the same slack eyes and unsteady gait as the locals. Wandering the streets with a face that still bore the stains of last night’s tears and drool.
It was like the grim anticipation of a drug addict. The base jealousy that throbbed like the heart of a freshly caught bird, hoping that Easterner would plummet to our level.
In a place where people lunged like wild animals just for eyeing their sleeping spot, he had nowhere to rely on but his sewer. Right here, he’d despair at the sudden change in his world and start to get stained like the rest. And no doubt, the one who’d witness that scene quickest, from the closest vantage, was him.
.
.
.
.
Claaang— clang—
“Hey! Workaholic! Got food, food!”
“...”
“Damn it, is this a house or a pigsty!”
The flap flew open.
“Ugh....”
“You’ve been glued to that electric forge all day, acting like it’s blinding you. Eat first!”
But he hadn’t expected the wait to drag on like this.
Three months since first meeting the Easterner named Han Seo-ho.
To Teka, who’d only ever seen people clinging to half-dead survival his whole life, Han Seo-ho’s will to live was something close to the inexplicable.
The first two days. He’d shown utter confusion, agonizing over whether it’d be more hassle to bash his head in with a hammer to shut him up or just dispose of the body. When he learned there was no outlet to plug in, he’d nagged relentlessly about his laptop’s dwindling battery, trying every trick he knew to reach the outside—like a startled hen.
One week. He’d gone out scouting for other ways, only to get clubbed by someone, stripped down to nothing but his underwear, and come back sobbing. Teka thought that’d quiet him down, but come next morning, he’d wrapped himself in a rag used for wiping grease and bolted out again.
Two weeks. Using his position as one of the few sane guys on the streets crawling with junkies and corpses, he’d scored some gig as a cartel gofer or messenger or whatever. Beaming about how he’d scrape together enough pennies to buy someone to send a letter outside, and the Korean embassy would come rescue him. Grinning that since he owed me, we’d leave together when the time came.
One month. The day someone jealous of his survival recommended him to the cartel. They figured an Eastern guide would be handy for kidnapping Eastern tourists, so they offered him a spot in the organization—and he turned it down.
The same day his sewer went quiet for the first time in a month. When Matteo came panting that “your friend got nabbed by the cartel,” Teka realized there wasn’t a trace of surprise in his reaction. Trembling so bad he couldn’t even grip his hammer, yet at those words, he bolted into the dawn streets. The day they found him discarded in the sewer, one eyeball gouged out raw, his right ring and pinky fingers chopped off—for ignoring the cartel.
It was all commonplace in Cracolandia. The very reason people here turned to drugs to escape reality.
Yet even after facing that raw reality head-on, Seo-ho didn’t get stained. He didn’t give up on escape.
“Ugh... ugh... my eye.... my eye....”
“Morphine’s a painkiller even out there.”
“I said no, you bastard.... It’s not ’cause I’m here.... Get a prescription from a hospital.... My eye.... Those dogshit thugs took my eye.... Ughhh....”
Two months. Once recovered, he blended into the streets in his own way. Learned how to stay off the cartel’s radar, how to act just dirty enough. On rainy days, he’d float letters in prepped bottles down the sewer. Among the junkies little better than corpses, he built his own network. From folks tossed out as cartel “bullets”—armed with a kitchen knife, lucky to return alive—he pried every detail, crafting new plans daily and bragging about them proudly.
“That guy’s an addict too.”
That was Teka’s conclusion. If folks here were addicted to everything they had—and even what they didn’t know they had—then this one was addicted to life. Without cause or reason. Just living was enough to make him thrash like that.
Watching this “vibrant human”—the first he’d ever seen—became Teka’s little hobby. Sure, he’d crash eventually, but if a few more like him existed in Cracolandia, maybe this forsaken street could change a bit.
“...You’re not gonna talk today either?”
“Food.”
“No, I gotta hear it today! It’s not like I don’t know already! Teka, or Teca—people call you that! Why dodge even a proper intro? Hello! Han Seo-ho, reporter from Korea, now a blind, crippled cartel errand boy! What’s your name? Come on, answer!”
“...If you’re not eating, I’m going in.”
“Argh, pissing me off! I’ll hear your name from your own mouth if it’s the last thing I do!”
“...Don’t have one.”
“You dog—ugh! Fine, what a grand lie! I’ve crashed in your sewer three months, mooching off you, and now you say no name? Oh man, you’re so filthy I—”
“Really. No name.”
“...You’re not the type to spout nonsense like that over and over. For real?”
“...Eat.”
So Teka didn’t want to reveal his name to Seo-ho.
Hard to put into words. Like wanting to shake off filth stuck to your shoe.
Tin Can. A name that’d roll away clanging noisily if kicked.
It took a while to realize this feeling was inferiority. In the same hell. Despite ample time to wash off the grime and get stained, Seo-ho hadn’t faded. The moment he first asked for Teka’s name, a twinge of shame pierced the heart that had always counted having a name as luck.
Hello. I’m Tin Can.
Teka couldn’t stomach saying it, so whenever his Eastern roommate asked, he’d ignore it and turn away.
Today, claiming no name was because he knew this Easterner had the stubbornness to refuse morphine even through the agony of having his eyeball ripped out raw. Seeing him ditch daytime errands to come hounding meant he’d nag all day unless tossed a bone.
“Teka.... Yeah, calling it a name from the tin can days feels off. So, no real name ever?”
“...Most born and raised on these streets don’t have names. No reason for others to call us. You, junkie, customer. People here are just flesh that consumes drugs. No need to distinguish age or gender, so no need for names.”
“...Really?”
Crunch!
Seo-ho took a huge bite of the canned sandwich he’d scrounged with effort, grimacing at the sour tang he’d grown somewhat used to, then spoke.
“Lucky bastard.”
“...Me?”
“Yeah. I hated my name. Seo-ho. Seo-ho. Sounds like a girl’s name. By the time I could express that my head was too big for it, the whole world had already nailed it down as Seo-ho. So yeah, you got lucky. You got to pick your own as a grown-ass adult, and unlike other junkies, there’s a sticky bastard like me trailing you for a proper intro. If that ain’t luck, what is?”
Lucky. Good things happening without trying. A thought Teka had never had in his life so far. Teka. Tin Can. The name he’d grown ashamed of months ago. No one called him anyway, so changing it on a whim wouldn’t stir shit.
But at least this Easterner in front of him. Even with pus-soaked bandages blinding him, this grinning guy would remember him by that name from now on.
For the first time since birth, Teka began seriously pondering his moniker. Name. The best-sounding one he’d ever heard. The most pleasing word.
“...Dollar.”
“Cut the crap.”
“Hmm.... Capo.”
“Capo? Capoooo? You gonna stand there in front of my empty eye socket and declare ‘My name’s Capo (boss)’? Huh? Why not just Don or Caporegime? Wanna relive getting your ass kicked when you first got here?”
“Hmm....”
Teka fiddled with his moistening share of sandwich, wracking his drug-fogged brain to its limit. Name. Mine. A word that, when someone called it, meant me—not its meaning, but solely me.
“...Dunno. Never thought about it.”
“Ugh, fine, don’t make that pitiful face. You always smirking gloomily—makes me wanna deck you. No name. Doesn’t even know how to make one. Hmm.... Alright, I’ll call you whatever I want?”
“Do what you want.”
Crunch, munch! Gulp, munchmunchmunch!
As Teka thought this Easterner made everything look dynamic. Seo-ho, mumbling nonstop while shoving his sandwich down his gullet, suddenly snapped his fingers and opened his full mouth.
“Buherurhe!”
Cough cough, hack! Gulp—
“Whew, ugh, tastes like shit. Thousand Stream Emperor! How’s Thousand Stream Emperor!”
“...Chauru-je?”
“Agh, that pronunciation makes it sound cheap as hell! Ah, try again—ah! Yeah! Flatten your tongue so the side touches your cheek! Tongue out, straight—Thousand! Stream! Emperor!”
“Tsuan.... Riu.... Je....”
“Yeah! Thousand Stream Emperor! Sovereign who commands heaven’s flow! Kyaa, I’ve always wanted a name like that! Damn, so badass! When someone asks your name~ and others say Deksu, Jimmy, Callum, you go ‘Thousand Stream Emperor.’ Hey! Pay up! This is worth charging for!”
“Thousand.... Stream.... Emperor....”
Teka—no, Thousand Stream Emperor—rolled his new name around his tongue for the first time in 21 years.
A tough Eastern name to pronounce. A meaning too embarrassing to voice. So alien it clearly set him apart from the other Cracolandia locals.
“Thousand Stream Emperor! Sounds smug yet dignified enough to be embarrassing—right up my alley! Tastes better the more you chew! No, I’m changing mine too when I get out! Han, Han.... Han Cheonma! Han Bigwang! Hannibal!.... [Hannibal here, miraculously survived the drug den of Brazil’s Sao Paulo. Yeah, Han clan.] Kyaah! Killer! When I get back, media’ll compete on ‘miracle survival’ and ‘Brazil’s hotbed’—shoulda changed it sooner!”
“...Hic.”
Watching him shake his fist at the sky in mock grievance. Seeing that fist with only three fingers left. Thousand Stream Emperor couldn’t hold back the ticklish squeeze in his lungs and opened his mouth.
“...Hic, heuk, hic—”
“Laughing?”
“Hee-hic, hic, hiik hic! Heu—”
“What the.... Laugh or choke?”
No clue. Why he was reacting like this.
If this was laughter, it was a different breed from what he knew. Not the sly grin with intent or expectation—just short bursts erupting unstoppable, for reasons unknown.
“Eww, hurts my ears. Hey, spit it out! Don’t hold back—out! Hoo! Ha!”
Slap!
A palm, a bit small for his scrawny back, landed. Like clearing a clogged pipe, scraping slag from hammered metal—it flew true, letting Thousand Stream Emperor expel the tickling breath refreshingly.
“Hahaha.... Keuk, hahaha, hahahaha!”
No idea what was so funny or ridiculous, but he couldn’t stop.
‘He’s stained.’
Over the past three months, every time he saw Han Seo-ho, a scene had played in his head.
With feverish anticipation. Like a prisoner giving up fast against sturdy bars, waiting for this clueless outsider scrambling everywhere to reach the same conclusion as them.
Like a bluebird cracking its skull against cage bars, the moment Han Seo-ho would wail in despair facing Cracolandia’s reality.
But even in this mire where man and filth blurred, without losing himself, Seo-ho laughed with his one eye—like the day they first met.
And he was dyeing Thousand Stream Emperor’s dead-alive life with the world’s light.
For the first time, Thousand Stream Emperor learned a person could respect another.
“Hahak, kuh! Heuk, hak! Hahaha!”
“Hole in your lung or what? Hey, try it now. ‘Hello, I’m Han Seo-ho from Korea~ The idiot who crawled into this dump on his own two feet, and you’re the bastard whose name I still haven’t heard~’”
Thousand Stream Emperor exhaled, locking eyes with Seo-ho, who glared like there was no escape now.
“Of Cracolandia.... Thousand Stream Emperor.... I make.... blades.”
“Yessssss!!!! Number one wish since coming here—achieved! Not three visits, but three hundred, and I finally get three letters! Whoever you are, must be one hell of a legend! Thousand Stream Emperor! Knew the name alone was no joke!”
Maybe we can get out. Really, with this guy, maybe.
“Hm? Where you going?”
“To forge.”
“Already? Don’t eat your sandwich, it’s mine.”
“...Worth the name.”
“This? Barely?”
Nod.
“Like it. The name.”
Thousand Stream Emperor pulled back the tarp over his sewer and powered up the forge.
Was it the new name? Or had Seo-ho’s fire caught in his sticky, phlegm-tangled guts?
The pathological hunger from drugs, the itch scraping his brain from inside—barely felt.
Instead, for the first time in ages, he wanted to do something.
‘Need money.’
Seo-ho wouldn’t stop trying till he left. The pay for gofer work barely bought these gut-rotting sandwiches.
But his blades fetched good prices among the mafiosi, he’d heard.
Till now, battery costs covered, price didn’t matter. From now on, he’d haggle.
“Anyway, you’re hopeless for anything metal.... Listen up. Got real good intel this time—Brazil gov’s rounding up strays for some shady new drug trials. Cracolandia’s on the list, sounds like. Could be our shot to contact outsiders!”
“...Not bad.”
“Right? Even you think so! Clinical trial poison worse than this sandwich? Take the hit, sneak past medics for one phone call....”
Clang—
Claaang—!
Amid Seo-ho’s voice spilling dubious intel from who-knows-where, Thousand Stream Emperor’s hammer rang through the sewer.
I want out. Maybe not for someone shining like Seo-ho. But for trash-born scum like me, if there’s a place out there too.
‘Wanna go out, see it.’
Even someone with nothing—could dream that much, right?
Thousand Stream Emperor found himself thinking he wanted to see the world where people like that lived, just once.
****
Boom—
Roooar!
[Notice to Sao Paulo citizens. Highly lethal gas is spreading near Cracolandia. Please evacuate the area immediately. Repeat: Highly lethal gas with explosion risk—]
“Cough cough! Fuck.... What gas, what evacuate.... You bastards.”
“Seo-ho, Han Seo-ho!”
“Ryu-je.... Yeah.... Unscathed limbs.... Guess luck’s.... Real.... Ughhh....”
Groooowl, gruk—
Gulp gulp—
“Do it.... Before too late.”
“...”
Click.
Exactly 78 hours later. Just before sliding the blade into Han Seo-ho’s pitifully twisted neck. That had been his one wish.
****