Chapter 5. My Universe
Chapter 5. My Universe
'Please... please don't come. Please...!'
My desperate prayer was powerless.
If there were a God, He wouldn't have brought down such a disaster.
Or perhaps, it was because God exists that He brought down this disaster.
The creature's damp snout reached the entrance of the alley.
The moment its blood-red eyes roughly groped through the darkness, my spine froze cold.
It was just one or two steps away.
The distance left before the creature opened its grotesque maw to tear at my throat.
Crashㅡ!
"Aaaahhh!!"
At that very instant, a sharp scream erupted from the nearby main road, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.
The creature's head snapped around.
Then, drooling, it ran madly toward where the sound came from.
"...Hoo."
The breath I had been holding gushed out along with blood-tinged saliva.
So-hee, who had been pressing her forehead against my back, was sobbing, tears streaming down her face without making a sound.
With trembling hands, I gently patted So-hee's fragile back, then hurried to quicken my pace in the opposite direction from where the creature had disappeared.
A crossroads of life and death where I couldn't let my guard down for even a single second was repeating every moment.
Like that, one step, then another.
Miraculously, we were surviving, crossing the line between life and death.
Truly... I wish that had been the case.
It was the moment we finally escaped the narrow alley and entered a small, open clearing that looked like a plaza.
Click! Rat-a-tat!
From all sides, the white searchlight beams of flashlights, blinding enough to make one lose their sight, poured onto us all at once.
"Ugh...!"
When I squinted to secure my vision, the situation was already over.
Even at a glance, more than ten men were surrounding us, holding up weapons.
The ends of the wooden clubs, kitchen knives, and steel pipes in their hands were sticky with someone's uncleaned blood.
'Hunting.'
My intuition warned me.
These guys weren't hiding from the monsters.
They were 'hunters' who had set a trap in this open clearing and were waiting to hunt the weak who walked in on their own.
The guys babbled something at us, but I couldn't understand a single word.
But there was no need to understand anyway.
The raw, beast-like hostility contained within their rough Japanese accents sank into my bones without needing translation.
Eyes paralyzed by fear, with reason gone.
And behind that, eyes filled with a bizarre, ecstatic joy, as if they had won the lottery.
It was a combination of madness that couldn't possibly coexist, but on a night when law and order had perished, questioning the reason was a luxury.
To these hunters, we weren't fellow humans, but merely prey to be toyed with and slaughtered.
Just a few hours ago, they must have been local youths kindly greeting people at convenience store counters, someone's ordinary father, or a sweet son.
But not anymore.
In front of the giant tidal wave of destruction, human civilization was castrated too easily, and all that remained was a cruel survival instinct.
I was confirming that cruelly ugly truth over and over again tonight.
'...We're fucked.'
Reflexively, I let go of So-hee's hand and completely hid her behind my back.
A dozen or so fully armed thugs.
I was alone, without any weapons.
No matter how much I racked my brain, it was a fight with no answer.
But there was nowhere to run.
Because behind me, So-hee was trembling like a fallen leaf, someone I had to protect even if it meant sacrificing my entire life.
The burly man in the lead let out a vile sneer and dragged his steel pipe along the cement floor.
Scraaaapeㅡ Clangㅡ!
With a bone-chilling friction sound, the guy closed the distance step by step.
In a split second, I mapped out the best movement path in my head.
Push So-hee into the left alley to open an escape route.
At the same time, kick the thigh of the guy who approached closest to break it.
When he collapses screaming, take the steel pipe and smash the right guy's temple.
After that, and after that....
There were too many variables.
They say you can't fight a crowd, but what's important to me right now isn't beating them all up, but buying even a moment of time for So-hee to escape somehow.
That was all.
I gently pushed So-hee's waist, guiding her toward the alley.
And glaring fiercely at the tightening encirclement, I clenched my fists until my knuckles turned white.
...That was my final calculation as a 'normal human.'
I threw myself first.
Waiting would only lead to a dog's death.
Hesitating when facing a crowd is suicide.
It was the only survival rule I had learned painfully from a life like a bottom-of-the-barrel trash can.
Thwackㅡ!
I drove a low kick, putting all my weight into it, into the thigh of the guy standing in the front row.
He collapsed to the floor with a short scream.
One.
Not missing that split-second opening, I snatched the steel pipe he was holding and kicked his face to push him away.
As soon as I secured the weapon, I twisted my waist and swung it full force at the side of the guy approaching from the right.
Crunchㅡ!
Two.
Up to here, it was perfectly according to plan.
The problem was, my half-baked plan only went this far.
The third guy brought a wooden club down on my head.
I stepped back half a step, dodging by a hair's breadth, and thrust the end of the steel pipe deep into his solar plexus.
With a suffocating, rupturing sound of "Ack," the third guy rolled on the floor.
Three.
But that was it.
While I neutralized one, two guys grabbed my limbs from both sides, and while I was watching the front, a cold weapon flew in from behind.
The very idea of blocking more than ten armed thugs with just my bare body was an arrogance that couldn't hold up from the start.
'At least So-hee... I have to save at least So-hee.'
My mind was screaming like crazy, but my body wouldn't follow.
I should have shouted at So-hee, whom I'd pushed into the alley, to run without looking back, but because of the blood filling my lungs, I couldn't even scream.
To protect So-hee behind me, I couldn't step back even a single inch.
Because the moment I collapsed, those hungry hyenas would trample me and rush at So-hee.
They swarmed in like a pack of dogs all at once.
There was no mercy like in third-rate movies where they attack one by one in order.
It was a foul.
A hard wooden club struck my shoulder, and a blunt pipe struck my spine mercilessly.
The fishy, hot taste of blood spread heavily throughout my mouth.
Even as my vision turned red, I desperately swung the steel pipe in my hand.
I crushed the face of the guy in front and kicked the solar plexus of the guy trying to tackle me.
One more guy collapsed, spewing blood, but in exchange, my right shoulder was slashed open by a sharp kitchen knife swung by someone.
Slashㅡ!
The moment my gaze was stolen by the burning pain, I lost my balance from a shoe kicking into my side and fell forward violently.
My cheek was miserably pressed against the cold, dirty cement floor.
Not missing that moment, the thugs' ruthless barrage of steel pipes and wooden clubs trampled and struck my spine, side, and thighs mercilessly.
Every time a blow landed, flashes of light burst before my eyes.
Whether it was boxing or jiu-jitsu, fighting a group of armed people with bare hands was a completely different dimension.
Because this wasn't inside a screen.
There was no way such a miraculous vicarious satisfaction, where a single protagonist beats up dozens of villains, would happen.
Still, I endured.
I gritted my teeth and endured, looking for an opening somehow.
The moment the violence, which felt like it would last forever, paused for a second, I spat out a mouthful of blood and screamed toward the alley until my throat burst.
"Run...! So-hee, please run!!!"
But instead of an answer, a heavy knee pressed down on my spine as if to break it, and both my arms were twisted grotesquely behind my back.
I struggled with all my might, but it was useless.
Because two, three grown men were pinning my limbs to the floor as if nailing them down.
And at the edge of that desperate field of vision, I caught sight of a man walking gloomily into the alley where So-hee was hiding.
"No...! No, you sons of bitches...!!!"
Someone grabbed my hair roughly and forced me to lift my head.
Beyond the forcibly secured view, the trajectory of something sharp and metallic piercing So-hee's chest in the darkness was clearly imprinted.
A thin scream.
And a fragile silhouette collapsing helplessly, as if the connection to the world she had been holding onto tightly had come undone.
That moment, it felt like time in the whole world had stopped.
I don't remember at all how I shook off the men who were pinning me down, or how I broke free from their restraint.
When I came to, I was already kneeling beside So-hee, covered in blood.
"So-hee...."
So-hee was lying on the cold cement floor.
Beyond her beautiful hair, dark red blood was spreading cruelly fast, soaking the floor.
"So-hee... Hey, Yoon So-hee... Open your eyes, okay?"
I shook her shoulders like a madman. So-hee's eyelids fluttered, and very slowly, they opened toward me.
But the focus of those clear eyes was already blurred and unfocused.
"...Ji-han...."
"Don't talk! Ugh... stay... still...! Breathe slowly...! You can get up. It's okay. I'll... I'll take you out. Okay? We just need to go to the hospital, so please...!"
It was a lie.
My head already knew everything.
I intuitively realized how the complexion of a human whose heart is stopping changes.
But my mouth wouldn't stop.
Just a few hours ago, we were laughing while looking at the blue sea.
Those sweet promises—that we'd definitely go to the Maldives next time, that even when our hair turned white and we became old, we'd hold hands and travel the whole world—were still alive and breathing so vividly in my ears.
So-hee's hand flickered faintly toward the air.
As if trying to convey something to me one last time.
In her small grip was the Sisa doll I had forced into her hand earlier, now stained and smeared with blood.
"...You... take it... this... will... protect... you...."
"...No, no, I don't want it. Give it to me when we go to Korea. Let's go to Korea together... give it to me when we get back to Korea, dammit!!!"
"...Fool...."
The corners of So-hee's lips drew a very faint arc as she exhaled.
"I... love... you... Ji-han...."
That was the last word of my universe.
The strength slowly drained from So-hee's fingers that were holding the doll, and it dropped to the floor with a thud.