It Can't Be Helped (6)
"You little bastard! Hand it over!"
"Finder's keepers! Get out of my way!"
Beast-like roars erupted from the dead silence of the ruined cityscape. Looters. Two men in clothes stained with dust and old blood were tangled together, rolling across the ground. Between them lay a single dented can bag, abandoned and alone. That one bag — in this moment, it was a treasure more precious than life itself.
Sang-goo watched them from the shadows of a concrete building. He wasn't timing his intervention. He was waiting for the most reliable experimental conditions to present themselves.
"Let go? I said let go!"
"Let go of it! Gaaah!"
Shhk—!
Blood finally spilled. The bigger of the two yanked a jackknife from his pocket and drove it deep into the other man's inner thigh.
"GRAAAAGH!"
Crimson blood fountained upward. A ruptured femoral artery. With every beat of the man's heart, his life poured out onto the pavement.
"Y-you son of a bitch… I told you to let go, didn't I?!"
Seeing the blood surging from the wound, the knifer panicked. He didn't even reach for the bag — just staggered backward, clearly terrified by the sheer volume of blood. He babbled something incoherent, then turned and bolted.
Sang-goo didn't chase him. His interest lay solely with the man dying on the cold asphalt, hemorrhaging out his life.
Thud. Thud.
Combat boots echoed through the alley. The fallen man looked up at the approaching silhouette through his dimming vision.
"S-save… me… please…."
Sang-goo studied his face. Cyanosis hadn't set in yet — but at this rate, the man was going to bleed to death. Sang-goo pulled out the serum with an expressionless face and filled a syringe with Jang Seok-woo's blood.
"If you're lucky, you'll live. Hold on tight."
The man was squeezing out the last of his strength to staunch the bleeding. Sang-goo drove the needle into his neck without hesitation, near the jugular and carotid. The plunger slid down, and the red liquid spread through the man's body.
A few seconds passed, and the bleeding dropped off sharply.
"Khh… hack! H-hot… it's hot…!"
The reaction was fast. The man, limp as a corpse a moment ago, was suddenly flopping like a fish out of water. It seemed to be pain like fire spreading through his veins — the blood vessels across his whole body writhed like earthworms, bulging beneath his skin.
Sssk—
The truly astonishing part was the wound itself. From the horribly torn flesh of his thigh, white, frothy granulation tissue came boiling up like foam. It was an unreal sight, like watching a time-lapse video. Severed blood vessels stretched out tendrils toward each other and knitted together, and shredded muscle twisted like rope, filling the hole in real time.
It's real.
Sang-goo couldn't look away. A chill ran through him. The cellular division rate was ignoring the laws of physics. This wasn't medicine — it was closer to magic.
Twenty seconds. That was all it took. The gushing wound healed perfectly, leaving nothing but a scar.
And then —
"Huuuuh… hnnnngh…."
The man started to weep. Whether from gratitude at being saved, or pity for what he had become, who could say. He wailed like someone who'd lost a parent, sorrow rolling off him in waves.
"……"
Sang-goo hadn't expected a thank-you, exactly. But an unbroken minute of sobbing was… a little strange.
A side effect?
"Hey."
At Sang-goo's call, the man scrambled to wrap himself up.
"Th… thank you."
"……How do you feel? Anything off?"
"No, sir. It's just…."
A faint killing intent seeped from the man as he bundled himself in his clothes.
You've got to be kidding me.
Wham—
The man sprang up and lunged, hand outstretched. In his right fist was a small knife — apparently drawn while he'd been wrapping himself up. The blade rose in a clean, precise arc toward Sang-goo's throat.
WHAM—! Crack—!
Sang-goo seized the man's arm, yanked him in, and slammed him face-first into the ground. Something in his back shattered against the cold asphalt.
"Ghhhuuuaaagh…."
"Unbelievable. A two-bit punk like this."
Had the miracle syringe made him greedy? Or had some side effect fried his brain? Crawling back from death's door only to go looting again — whatever the reason, Sang-goo didn't like him. Well, at least the serum seemed to work. A few more trials and he'd have a clearer answer.
Sang-goo calmly drew his pistol from his waistband.
"Experiment concluded."
Crack!
A neat, perfect hole punched through the man's forehead, and he dropped without a sound. Sang-goo walked over and inspected the thigh wound again. Perfect — no suturing required. Only reddened skin remained, as if the injury were days old.
This'll be solid insurance in a pinch.
It can't be helped… anymore. He had to keep Jang Seok-woo alive and under his control — no matter what. If he could learn more about the side effects and prepare countermeasures, this serum would become humanity's last great cure.
Sang-goo picked up the can bag the two men had been fighting over, then made his way to the alley's entrance, where an old man lay slumped beside a pile of garbage.
"……"
The original victim — already beaten and left for dead before the looters had turned on each other. A stab wound marked the old man's abdomen, and the ground beneath him was soaked dark with blood.
"Aw, hell."
He'd assumed the man was dead and focused on the looters instead. But there — faint, yet unmistakable — a pulse. The old man had lost a lot of blood, but it was too soon to give up. Not when he had a way.
Sang-goo drew another vial, filled a fresh syringe, and administered it to the old man.
Sssk—
The effect was as reliable as ever. The abdominal wound closed rapidly.
But —
"Ugh… cold… so cold…."
Despite the healed wound, the old man's condition didn't improve. His face was white as a sheet, and his body trembled like a leaf in the wind.
Hypovolemic shock.
Sang-goo's brow furrowed. Jang Seok-woo's serum only accelerated tissue regeneration — it apparently couldn't recreate the blood that had already poured out of the body. When blood volume was too low, no amount of pumping from the heart could deliver oxygen to the brain and organs. The wound would be perfectly fine, and the man would still die.
He needs a transfusion.
Sang-goo pulled a rapid blood-typing kit from his coat and tested the old man. Type B. Sang-goo was type A — he couldn't donate. And with only a single vial of Jang Seok-woo's serum left, using it as a blood substitute was laughably out of the question.
"No choice but to head back to camp."
He was just carefully gathering the old man into his arms when —
"Grandpa! Grandpa!"
Three young men came sprinting down the far end of the alley, brandishing a steel pipe and baseball bats. They were evidently the old man's companions. They spotted Sang-goo and tightened their grips on their weapons, wary and tense.
"Who are you?!"
"W-where do you think you're taking him?!"
"Calm down. I'm treating him."
Sang-goo spoke evenly, the old man still cradled in his arms. "I've stopped the bleeding, but he's lost too much blood. Anyone here who can donate? Type B."
The young men hesitated, glancing at each other.
"There's no time. Any later and he's really gone."
One of them — the leader, it seemed — rolled up his sleeve without a moment's hesitation. "Me! I'm type B! Take mine!"
"Not here. Where's your shelter?"
"That way… the underground parking garage."
"Carry him. There's something I need to grab."
The young men's shelter was the basement parking garage of a dilapidated building nearby. The entrance was barricaded with discarded furniture, and inside, a dozen or so people were living huddled together — mostly the elderly, the infirm, and the wounded.
Sang-goo skillfully connected the catheter and transfused the young man's blood into the old man. Color began returning to the old man's face, and his breathing gradually steadied.
"Whew…."
Sang-goo wiped the sweat from his brow. Little Dog was keeping a heavy, watchful perimeter wherever Sang-goo's gaze came to rest.
"Stay and rest. Now that I'm here, I'll take a look at some of the other patients. Call me if you need anything."
The beast nodded, but held his post all the same, solid as a boulder.
"Anyone here with injuries?"
People who'd been hanging back began drifting over, one by one. Sang-goo tended to the minor wounds of the other patients in the shelter — excising festering cuts, suturing torn flesh. On top of that, he carved off half of the food he'd brought and handed it out. Little by little, the wariness in the residents' eyes gave way to respect and relief.
Then again, in desperate times, food and kindness were how you won hearts — wasn't that always the way?
"You were a doctor, weren't you. Thank you — truly. For saving our grandfather…."
The young man who'd given his blood, Minsu, bowed his head.
"Skip the thanks. Give me information instead."
Sang-goo tossed Minsu a pack of cigarettes he'd brought along and asked. Eyes turned from all around — it looked about to get loud, so he pressed on. "That high-rise apartment complex over there. How do I get into Geumji New City?"
Minsu's face darkened.
"That's… the Crows' territory. Outsiders are absolutely forbidden. Get anywhere close and they snipe you without warning — man or drone, doesn't matter. No warnings at all."
"I know about the Crows. Still, there has to be some way. Trading supplies, something."
"There is… one way. But you need a transit pass."
Minsu exhaled a long sigh and explained. The district was divided by two main axes — Geumji 8th Street running east-west, and Geumji 4th Street running north-south. Deep inside lay Geumji New City, the Crows' fortress. Outside was a lawless sprawl tangled with ordinary survivors like Minsu's group and the looters. And along that boundary line, parasites thrived, wielding power they had no right to.
"There's a place called the Mirae Building — a twenty-story tower about a kilometer from here. A gang called the Sinsegi Gang has dug themselves in there."
"Sinsegi Gang?"
I've heard of them.
"Yes. Their boss pays tribute to the Crows and appointed himself gatekeeper. Looks like the Crows outsourced the messy business of dealing with outsiders to them. You have to negotiate through those guys and get the code from them — otherwise you get sniped the moment you approach."
Sang-goo nodded. At the same time, September of last year surfaced in his memory.
Ahjussi.
Before leaving Busan, he'd visited a hospital with Hwang Sang-chul while scavenging medical supplies — the hospital had been run by gangsters, thugs the old man had once had dealings with. As far as he knew, the Sinsegi Gang's boss and his crew had all died under the old man's blade back then.
Tiresome pieces of gang shit.
Gangsters were always the problem, no matter the era. Just thinking the word made Sang-goo's blood boil and something twist in his chest — the thought of his father did that to him. A gang brazenly wearing its name on its sleeve, doing the Crows' subcontracted dirty work while squeezing the civilians around them.
"Then I just need a meeting with their boss."
"Th-that's insane! You're going alone?"
Minsu recoiled in horror, and the other young men were right behind him.
"There are over a hundred of them! Even without guns, they're crawling with guys armed with steel pipes and blades. No matter how well-armed you are, sir, alone is suicide!"
"Doesn't matter."
Sang-goo gathered his gear and stood.
"I'm not alone, either."
At his gesture, Little Dog trotted over, tail wagging.
"Just point me down the road. And watch the bike for me."