Curtain Call
In the memoirs penned by war veterans scraping by with an editor’s help, or in the cheap popular novels churned out in the modern era, the moment a bullet tears through soft subcutaneous fat is usually described as the dull, searing plunge of a thick, hot needle into flesh.
Helen had never been shot before, had never expected to be, and had certainly never lived a life that invited such an experience. So, like any reasonable reader, she had simply nodded along, taking the literary flourish at face value.
But there was one critical truth the printed word could never convey. We must stare the deceptive limits of ink squarely in the eye.
No matter how gifted the writer, the thin layer of ink on a page can never fully reproduce the sensation of nerve bundles being ripped apart.
It simply cannot be done.
Anyone who claims to have read such a perfect description is a liar.
And anyone who genuinely believes they have is either a pretentious scholar who only encountered the elegantly sanitized version that passed through a profit-obsessed publisher’s editorial process, or a pedant who read some grotesquely mangled translation so heavily footnoted it could no longer express its original intent.
Helen learned this far too late.
“…?”
In the brief instant right after impact, there was no pain. The beginning was merely an unpleasant thud, a vision that rapidly darkened.
Then her body flailed once in the air like a foreign bisque doll whose spring had run out, before slamming helplessly onto the slippery gravel.
The pain only arrived after a faint, electric thread of self-awareness had crawled across her entire body.
“…!”
“Does it hurt?”
Fedora slid the still-smoking revolver back into his coat and asked the question, but no answer came.
The agony had already overwhelmed every other sense. She couldn’t hear him, let alone reply.
Even so, Fedora wore the satisfied expression of a man who had received exactly the response he wanted. He began walking slowly toward Helen.
After all, no one was more expressive than a deaf person who had to accompany every word with exaggerated gestures.
“I asked if it hurts.”
“Kuh… khh… ugh…”
“I asked you a question. Answer me!”
Fedora, now standing right over her, slammed his foot into Helen’s stomach as she writhed on the gravel.
At roughly sixty pounds, Helen rolled across the sharp-edged stones like a rag doll, vomiting what tears and pink fluid she still had left.
The process repeated several times. Each dull impact sent her bouncing like a cork. When her body ran out of fluids, dark red blood began trickling from her lips down her soot-stained cheeks.
And then, when it seemed nothing more could possibly come out, Helen stared at the last Molotov cocktail still burning uselessly just an arm’s length away and whispered.
“Please… spare me…”
Please spare me! Please spare me! The pathetic, jingling plea only added a pleasant thrill to Fedora’s already boiling rage.
It might have been a chilling sense of conquest. Or perhaps simple sadism. It didn’t matter. Fedora approached the girl sprawled on the ground, twitching intermittently.
Though the distance between them was closing, her breathing seemed to be drifting farther away.
A brutal hand seized Helen by the hair, yanking her up as if grabbing a rabbit by the ears.
Helen wore the exact expression one might expect from someone facing a creature of pure malice.
Fedora studied that face, then snarled like a gambler who had just torn up a winning ticket.
“Seventeen years.”
“Kh… kkh…”
“That’s how long we’ve been stuck in this godforsaken port.”
“Spare… s-spare me…”
“And this year was supposed to be the last. We were finally going to leave these filthy docks and step into the light.”
“Please…”
“But look at you. You ruined everything, you bitch.”
“…”
“Thanks. I mean that. Because of you, next time I won’t hesitate to kill brats or women.”
“…”
“So, as repayment, I’ll at least hear your last words. Anything to say before you die?”
“Fu…”
“Can’t hear you. Speak clearly.”
Fedora knelt to bring their eyes level while still gripping her hair, shoving his face close to her twitching mouth.
“It’s your final will. Choose your words carefu—”
“Go fuck yourself, you thug bastard.”
Fedora sensed something was wrong and tried to jerk his head back, but Helen’s hands clamped onto the back of his skull first.
“What the hell are you—!!!!!”
Before he could react, Helen yanked his head forward with all her strength, drove her thumb into his left eye socket, and sank her teeth into the bridge of his nose with everything she had.
Her small, tightly packed teeth tore through skin, crushed soft cartilage and the nasal septum, and finally the taut flesh gave way with an audible snap.
“GRAAAAAAGH!!!!!!”
The irreversible damage to his eye and nose sent Fedora thrashing his head wildly. Blood fountained from where his nose had been like a crimson whip—perhaps he suffered from high blood pressure.
“Munch munch… ptoo!”
Helen, sitting unsteadily on the ground, chewed the severed nose for a moment before spitting it out along with a mouthful of blood.
“Heh heh heh… If you’re gonna look for your mom in hell, you’ll need both eyes and a nose… What a shame.”
Still lying flat on her back, Helen wiped the blood dripping from her mouth and burst into manic laughter, clearly pleased with her own dark joke.
“Khhhhhh…!!!!”
Fedora clutched the ruin of his face with both hands. After the worst of the pain subsided, he drew the knife from his coat.
“I’m going to kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll chop you up so fine no one will ever find your corpse. Yeah… that sounds perfect.”
When the blood-drenched Fedora turned toward her, eyes wild and pupils contracted like a fish’s, Helen recognized the depth of his hatred and quietly steeled herself.
Even then, she didn’t lose her wit. She kept running her mouth right up until his brutal hands and sharp blade began carving through her guts.
“Haha. Did your mom squeeze too hard when she was giving birth to you? How hard would she have to squeeze for your nose to cave in like that?”
“Shut up!!!!”
Blind with rage, Fedora’s movements grew faster.
“Die!!!!”
In the blink of an eye he was standing over her, knife raised high in a reverse grip. Moonlight added a chill to the silver blade while the blazing flames of the distant Molotov cocktail mixed into the chaotic tableau, making the whole scene feel eerily alien.
Helen watched the messy blade descend in what felt like slow motion.
She considered closing her eyes. Dying was scary, after all. Yeah, she’d close them. After that, she’d pray that the next world would at least give her infinite money cheats instead of this trashy romance-fantasy nonsense.
…
…But
Before that, maybe she should take one last look at this pathetic, ridiculous snot-nosed bastard?
She’d smile brightly at him.
Maybe flip him off too.
That way it would feel like she won.
“Hee hee. Nose-for-brains.”
“@#*(#@&@#(!!!!!!”
She thrust a short, defiant middle finger toward him and gave a bloody grin. Fedora, having lost all human language, came charging at her foaming at the mouth.
Helen took that sight as the ultimate proof of her victory and let every muscle in her body go limp.
At the same time, she closed her eyes, ready to bring this little tragedy to its final curtain.
Like a stage after the play had ended. Like a large, soft curtain descending from far away.
.
..
…
…?
“?”
Helen’s eyebrows twitched with suspicion. For something as grand and final as death, the scene change was taking far too long.
She waited politely for the horrible sensation of sharp metal punching through her delicate fat and shredding her organs, but one second became two, then three. In that bizarrely stretched eternity, an ominous doubt seized her.
Hadn’t the knife been flying toward her? What was going on? Where was the long, bone-deep pain that should have raced down her spine? Had she died already?
While one rational thought chased another, Helen’s irritation finally overcame the curtain of her eyelids. Human curiosity won out. She opened her eyes with extreme caution.
The sight that greeted her was something she could never have imagined even in a dream. The knife Fedora had been driving down in a reverse grip hovered barely half a handspan from her stomach, trembling pathetically in midair like an amateur sculptor who had run out of marble before finishing the last piece.
Helen was astonished. Was this magic? Some kind of awakening on the brink of death?
Of course not. A large, rough palm had simply seized the blood-foamed blade like a bird of prey. The grip was so monstrously powerful that she could almost hear the minute grinding of muscle and bone against steel.
When Helen saw the face attached to that hand, a weak sigh escaped her torn lips.
“Ah, Mister… your hand…”
“Hoo… hoo… You’re not dead, are you?”
The rugged jawline heaving with rough breaths, the sharp, vivid eyes that bordered on fierce yet remained strangely attractive, the Chesterfield coat with the same old scratches, the unfashionably outdated bread-shaped flat cap—
—that ridiculously welcome bread hat.
“Some stray mutt from who-knows-where dares to pull a knife on one of my employees… Take this!”
Bread Hat, who had been smiling faintly at Helen, suddenly whipped his head around and delivered a brutal headbutt to the still-dazed Fedora.
“KRAK!”
“Hoo… I told you not to hit the same spot twice, you idiot.”
The headbutt landed directly on the gaping wound where his nose had been. Fedora staggered backward, howling in far greater pain than expected.
While his opponent was reeling, Bread Hat wrenched the knife out of his own palm with a violent tug and struck a pose.
“Hey! You don’t look too good either. How about we both call it quits right here?”
“Khhhk! I’ll kill you! And that little brat too! I’ll kill you all!”
“Haha! What can a guy with no knife and no nose even do? What exactly do you think you can do, you fu—”
While Bread Hat twirled the stolen knife mockingly, Fedora suddenly roared and pulled a backup pistol from inside his coat.
“Shut up!”
“Not much for conversation, but you’ve got plenty of tricks. Mind telling me how many you’ve got left?”
“Why the hell would I tell you that?”
“Just figured your hands are shaking so badly I was worried. Think you can even hit me with one shot?”
“Kahaha! You’re more considerate than you look, huh? Including this one, I’ve got four left! More than enough to send you and that brat straight to hell, so don’t worry!”
“Wow, you’re rich too? You might actually make a pretty good partner… Now!”
“Shit…!”
At what sounded like a signal, Fedora spun around in a panic, but no one was there. Realizing he’d been tricked, he screamed with an even redder face.
“Khhhk! I won’t let my guard down agai—URK?!?!”
His eyes rolled back and he collapsed.
“Hey, idiot! Why are you so late?!”
“I ran out the second you gave the signal, but this guy tripped and fell on his way out.”
“You…!”
Helen didn’t know where they had come from, but the moment she saw Tungtung-i and Bisil-i standing there awkwardly holding what looked like sturdy wooden clubs, tears welled up in her eyes.
No—she simply started crying. She bawled her eyes out. All the fear, worry, and pain she had endured that chaotic night melted away like snow, and every drop came pouring out at once.
“Huuuuaaaaang… M-Mister… hic… Mister… Tungtung-i… kheung! B-Bisil-i uncle… huuuuuuaaaaang…”
“Tungtung-i? Bisil-i? Oh, it’s you two.”
“…”
“…”
Tungtung-i and Bisil-i stared with complicated expressions at Helen, who was leaking tears, snot, and blood everywhere, and at Bread Hat who was holding her in his arms.
Then they heard the sharp trill of police whistles growing steadily closer and spoke urgently.
“Anyway, Boss, we should get going. Looks like they think this is their chance—the fire brigade isn’t the only one coming. The tax office is on its way too.”
“He’s right, Boss. Better get out before we get tangled up with them.”
“Yeah. I’d rather die than get involved with the tax office. But before that…”
Bread Hat accepted their advice and began walking toward Fedora, who was still twitching on the ground, when—
“Hic… It’s okay… You don’t have to…”
Helen, still clinging to his chest, burrowed deeper and tried to stop him.
Bread Hat stroked her head and spoke in a deliberately stern tone.
“No. We need to finish this properly. When an opportunity like this comes—”
“Kheung…! That’s not what I mean… He’s going to die anyway… Whether from blood loss or sepsis…”
“??? Huh? Is that so?”
Clearly not the answer he had expected, Bread Hat stood there stunned for a moment, then shrugged and quickly left the docks.
All the while gently patting the back of the hiccupping Helen who kept trying to burrow deeper into his coat.