You Mean This Is True?
What am I looking at. Why am I here.
I am nothing but a man who knows how to write. A stubborn man of letters — tell him to write and he writes; tell him not to, and he writes all the same. I am not a man who records fetuses made by artificial conception, harvested eggs filled with the clan head's seed. I am not a man meant to behold defective products coming into the world with three hands, one leg, and three pupils. I am not a man who needs to know that green-haired humans without a self are ground to nothing in a crusher. I am not a man who ought to hear researchers sip their coffee while they lay the next plan for Replication. I am not even a man who should stand close enough to watch the clan head's eyes cloud over, and his mouth split wide like a demon's.
I.
I am not a man who belongs in this hell.
"You've worked hard again today, Scribe."
Scientist. The man set over this hell offered me the words with a friendly smile. Pupils with no light in them rolled, left and right, in perfect symmetry.
"Still keeping the record, I see. Even I find myself admiring such diligence."
Why had he come. Had I done something to cross him?
The words would not come. From fear? I wished it were fear. If terror were still in me, I might have escaped this hell, if only for a little while.
"……Do you have some business with me?"
My vocal cords groomed the air until it became a human voice. A grotesque dissonance — the scrape of iron married to the soft give of a doll — carried the meaning across.
Scientist's smile deepened.
"I have no particular business. It has been a long time since we met face to face, and I thought there might be room for a light greeting. Have I made you uncomfortable?"
"……No."
"Hahaha! For a man who says no, that expression is rather poor. Very well. Next time I shall come bearing a gift."
"There is no need."
"You needn't refuse. I am certain you will be satisfied."
From his pocket Scientist drew two pills. Ordinary red capsules, the sort found in any pharmacy, sat daintily in his palm.
"This is a token of sincerity, for my rudeness."
"What is it?"
"Something like red ginseng. A health food. Eat it, and the body improves."
He forced the pills into my hand.
"I would be grateful if you made certain to take them. Of late the shadows beneath your eyes have grown deep, Scribe."
"It is an occupational disease."
"Is that so? Then allow me to guarantee it. Take these pills today, and tomorrow you will pass the day in excellent vigor."
Scientist leaned to my ear and spoke low.
"They blow the head wide open."
"……"
"Hahaha! I will be going. The experiments have piled up. Take care."
"……"
Two red pills. A health food that blows the head open when you swallow it. Given by that demon, it could not possibly be an ordinary thing.
What was it made of. A human brain? A superhuman's scream? Discarded test subjects, recycled? Or some new substance all his own?
I did not want to know. I had already faced more scenes than I could count that I could not understand. The common sense I had built over a lifetime had collapsed. My affection for human beings had cooled. Love of humankind did not exist. Human evil had no end, and the adaptability that accepted that evil was enough to raise the hair.
A day, to nightmare. A week, to rage. A month, to grief. Half a year, to prayer. A year, to resignation. And now…… to familiarity.
Whether the babies in the test tubes died or not. Whether the clan head browbeat the researchers, demanding eternal life. Whether I watched the show of superhumans taken apart. Like I gave a damn.
I had one task. I took blank paper for a friend and a pencil for a hand, and I recorded what I saw. That — lodged in the corner of a heart worn away to nothing — was the only humanity I had left.
Clunk.
Today, too, the baby before my eyes is cut into sections. Tomorrow will likely be the same. Next year will likely look no different. And the me of that time will likely do as I do today.
I will record it.
The clan head took my family.
The reason was absurd. My son had spoken of me without a thought — that his father was suffering terribly; that he seemed to be doing some kind of work with the clan head, and it worried him; that he wondered whether a tonic might be found to ease both body and mind. Just that. Just the devotion of an ordinary son. He had only opened his heart to the friends he kept company with, and asked the adults for help.
What came of it was a notice.
"Your boy doesn't keep his mouth shut the way you do."
He tossed it out lightly, in the living room from which my son had been taken and even my wife had vanished.
"Pitiful. You're as ill-blessed in your children as I am."
"……"
"Don't worry. I handled it properly."
"……What became of my wife?"
"You know, don't you?"
"……"
"Well. As a favor to you, I had her used just the once, and then disposed of."
She was old, and there had been hardly any use in her.
"Nothing left to fret yourself over. No need to be grateful."
A leader had to do what a leader must.
"I'll give you a few days' leave. Rest."
"……"
A house left to me alone. A house with no one in it. A house where no one would welcome me. A house without a family.
Why had the clan head comforted me?
"Why?"
A warning, that I too could end this way? Mercy, offering me one last chance?
"……"
Or else. Consideration — him looking after the people who were mine?
"For what?"
Surely not……. Did the clan head already take me for a man who had climbed into the same boat as himself?
Because we had worked side by side for years with me saying nothing? Because not one discordant sound had ever come from me?
"So that was it……."
The realization bored into my mind.
Seen from the outside, I was already a man who could not get out…….
"And before I knew it, I."
"Was not a person at all."
"Hahaha."
"Ha."
"Cough! Cough!"
A dead hour of the night, when the crickets would not sing and the moon hid between the clouds. With only candlelight for company, my hands still at their work, I vomited black blood in a violent rush.
A brimming scoop of blood-water spilled across the paper. The stuff — kin to phlegm, revolting as a snake — beckoned me to come, and quickly.
"Haa. Haa."
I feel it. Death is drawing near.
It was not strange. A human mind had given up on being human. My body is a thing for a person; it does not run for one who is not. That misalignment was what drove me here.
"But not yet……."
I push the blood-soaked paper aside. I draw out a fresh sheet. I write. So that no one will know. Sheltered by the leave the clan head granted me, I set down everything I am still able to write — so I will not be ashamed before the family that has gone, leaning on the last of the conscience that remains.
"Krrk."
Bloody phlegm surges up my throat. I cannot hold. The body will not follow. As if this were divine punishment, Heaven is coming to take me.
"No. No."
I ransack the drawer. I bring out the last resort I had meant never to use. Two red pills. I swallow them down with the blood.
"Huuuurgh!!!"
My lungs thrash. My nose swells larger than a finger, and my heart is beaten as fast as a janggu drum.
Bang!
The sickening state inside my head improves. My mind blows wide open.
"……"
That man was right. In a body like this, I would be able to pass tomorrow in comfort.
Yes. Tomorrow only. The day after tomorrow, I will certainly die.
"Why did he give this to me?"
What was the point of going out of his way to give me a drug that kills whoever swallows it? As if he had foreseen I would use it in exactly this way?
"……"
It does not matter. I will do my work, and die.
I take up the pen again. I clear the sheaf of paper aside. There is no longer any fear of vomiting blood. Until tomorrow, I would still be able to write the book.
And so, hoping my meaning will reach someone, I write this diary.
It is a diary because this is my last record.
By the time someone has read these words to the end, they will have read everything I wrote before them. All of it is true. I saw a horrific truth from up close, heard it, and recorded it, and I stored those records where no one but I would know.
Go to the next place.
Everything I have left is there.
Neither of them spoke. With a flat tap, Hwang Seokgu closed the diary.
"……In all likelihood, yes."
"None of that likelihood. Answer me straight. Is this true?"
"……Yes."
"Hah."
Hwang Seokgu could not get his mind around it.
"Miryu, write a novel like this nowadays and they'll curse you for it. No plausibility, they'll say."
"……"
"Replication. Immortality research……. And using living people to do it. And this happened a mere few decades ago."
Hwang Seokgu dragged a dry hand down his face.
"Now I see why you said this had to do with me. How could it not. I'm a man who lived through that age. I buried myself in the mountains to stay out of the government's sight, and all I did was wait for time to pass……."
Hwang Seokgu's eyes went dim.
"Miryu, in those days I felt the pain of loss down to the bone. Even so, I didn't throw hope away. Because I was still alive, I believed the people they'd taken must be living well too. I believed that."
"……I am sorry."
"Don't apologize. That isn't something I ought to hear from you."
Hwang Seokgu sank back into the sofa. In the space of a moment, his skin seemed to have aged ten years.
"I want to be alone for a while. Go catch your breath in the break room."
Dan Miryu went out with his head bowed.
Hwang Seokgu looked at the framed photograph on the office desk. There he was in his younger years, and beside him a fresh-faced country woman with fox ears, the two of them beaming.
The woman's belly was swollen. Only a little — but swollen.