To Russia
The baggage conveyor belt creaked along in its slow, listless rotation.
"Oh, come on. Why is my suitcase taking so long?"
Arms crossed, Jihoon glared irritably at the belt.
The only bags riding it were a few battered Boston duffels and a handful of shabby cloth sacks.
As he grumbled and checked his phone's clock, his gaze drifted to the desolate airport interior, which was all but empty.
It was the kind of bleak, drained setting that belonged in a cold-war horror film — like something out of a Backrooms creepypasta. Peeling paint on the walls, dim and flickering lighting, and the musty stench of decades-old cigarette smoke soaked into everything.
"Haah... damn it. I really must be insane. Is this actually happening?"
Jihoon let out a long sigh. Standing in some unnamed, run-down regional airport in Russia, he was nothing more than a tired foreigner waiting for his luggage.
As he stood there in a daze, waiting for his carrier, the whirlwind of events from the past few days flashed through his mind like a highlight reel.
When Jihoon had gone completely hollow-eyed staring at Yevgenya's photo in the third folder, the branch manager had frantically shouted at him.
"Sir, please! I distinctly warned you to think this over carefully! Two hundred million won in debt, plus bribes for draft evasion! I told you this is a leaking bucket — a bottomless pit!"
But Jihoon had simply cut him off with a calm, sly smile.
"Mr. Branch Manager. About that two-hundred-million debt. Would it be possible to have the debt assigned to my name as a kind of 'bond holding,' in exchange for me paying it off in full? I mean a form where I could seize her assets or resell the debt whenever I pleased."
The manager blinked in bewilderment for a moment, then nodded.
"W-well, it's possible. It's such toxic debt that even the loan sharks would hand the claim over with open arms if you paid back just the principal. Granted, given the long-term collapse of the ruble, it would be a colossal financial loss for you... but ah, if your purpose is to pressure her family and keep her under your complete control — as a kind of 'countermeasure' or a leash, so to speak — then it could be a brilliant choice indeed."
"Then get it done fast. I'll wire the money right now."
Thanks to the war, direct flights from Korea to Russia had been completely suspended.
Jihoon had thrown money at the problem and flown from Korea to China, China to Moscow, and then Moscow to this run-down regional airport — three transfers in total.
The China-to-Moscow leg had been luxurious: a top-tier business class seat nearly as good as first. The problem was the domestic flight from Moscow to this provincial airport.
Forget business class — it was a rattling, propeller-driven junker of a plane, and the so-called in-flight meal consisted of a single ham-and-cheese sandwich so cold and hard it made his teeth ache.
All the money in the world was useless here.
"Ah, for God's sake. I've been through every hardship there is to have."
Just as Jihoon was stretching his neck and muttering complaints, his enormous luxury suitcase finally emerged in the distance.
"There it is, finally!"
He snatched the carrier up quickly and headed for the exit.
Peering toward the dim entrance, where the ceiling lights were out in patches and the gloom gave the place the air of a haunted lodge, Jihoon tilted his head.
"They told me a local guide would be standing right outside the airport with a picket sign... Why don't I see anyone?"
The reason he'd flown all the way to this dangerous, godforsaken war-torn country with all that money in hand was, ironically, the war itself.
With the population plummeting, the Russian government was running a madly aggressive pro-marriage, pro-birth policy. And especially for local officials scraping by on their own, a well-placed 'bundle of dollars' bought administrative processing fast enough to make Korean civil servants weep — marriage registration all the way to an exit visa, straight through on the express lane.
Besides, the branch manager had explained that Yevgenya's family lived in a backwater village where even the electricity was unreliable, so she had come to stay in the town near this regional airport — the only place with a government office — for her marriage interview and paperwork.
"I mean, in the movies it's always guys in suits standing right there holding a sign that says 'KIM JI HOON,' isn't it? The service is total garbage. Garbage, I swear."
No matter how much he scanned the room, there was no sign of a greeter.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Jihoon dragged his suitcase out of the airport.
It was already growing dark outside the bleak terminal entrance.
A cold wind blew through, and a few gaunt locals in threadbare jackets began sidling up to him.
"Hey, kitaitsy (Chinese)? Cigarette... you have cigarette?"
"Hey, friend! Need taxi? Come with me! Cheap price for you!"
Men with menacing faces begged for cigarettes or hawked rip-off taxi fares.
"Ah, no, no. Thank you. I'm fine. My guide is coming."
Jihoon flinched, gripping his suitcase tight, and declined in clumsy English.
These men looked like they were missing a few screws, or else straight out of some back alley — best not to get tangled up with them.
So he stood there shivering in the cold wind for what felt like ages.
He was just reaching for his roaming smartphone to give the branch manager a piece of his mind when—
Boom-chick! Boom-boom-chick! Bum-bum-ba-bum!
Far off in the distance, kicking up clouds of dust, an old boxy bread van came barreling toward him at breakneck speed, blaring a Russian hardbass track with a beat that was absolutely unhinged.
The famous Russian specialty known as the Bukhanka.
"Chiki-briki i v damki!! (ЧИКИ-БРИКИ И В ДАМКИ!)"
Jihoon didn't know a word of Russian beyond simple greetings, but those insane lyrics blasting out of the van somehow stirred a strange urge in him — as if listening alone compelled him to strap on a gas mask, suck on a vodka bottle in the middle of a radioactive zone, and break into a Cossack dance on the spot.
Screeeech—!
With a deafening squeal of brakes, the Bukhanka pulled to a perfect stop right in front of Jihoon's nose.
Before the dust had even settled, the driver's window rolled down and a man with a shaggy beard and an ushanka hat stuck his head out.
"Hey! Korean? Mr. Kim Ji-hoon, is it?!"
The man shouted with a good-natured grin.
'Ugh, and he's late...'
Jihoon swallowed his anger, forced it down, and replied, "Yes, I'm Kim Jihoon."
"Hahaha! Welcome! I'm Artyom, your guide! I figured the flight would be delayed so I left late, and you arrive right on the dot, sharp as a blade! Anyway, get in! I'll take you straight to your lodging — where Miss Yevgenya is!"
At the mention of Yevgenya, Jihoon's anger melted away like snow.
He clunked open the old Bukhanka's iron door, tossed his suitcase into the back seat, then pulled open the front passenger door.
And at the exact moment he set one foot on the chassis to climb in—
"Wuuooong?"
Something enormous and fur-covered in the passenger seat turned its massive head and looked down at him.
A body the size of a grown man. Sharp claws. Bright, alert eyes.
"...????"
Jihoon gasped and froze solid.
It was a brown bear.
A genuine, living, breathing brown bear sat primly with its seatbelt fastened, occupying the entire passenger seat, and was sniffing at him.
"Ah, did I scare you?"
Artyom laughed cheerfully, hands on the wheel, and patted the bear on the back of its neck.
"Hahaha! This here's my pet dog... no wait, my companion bear, Shigure. Total softie, no need to be scared! Say hello, Shigure. He's a VVIP guest."
"Woong."
The brown bear named Shigure let out a short grunt in Jihoon's direction.
"No... seriously... what kind of madness is this."
Cold sweat streaming down his back, Jihoon silently choked down a stream of curses.
'A companion bear? Are you out of your mind? And what kind of name is Shigure for a bear, anyway. Shibure, more like.'
Wrestling with the terror and absurdity of having his head swatted clean off by a bear paw at any moment, Jihoon crammed himself awkwardly into the back seat with trembling legs.
"Alright, we're off! Miss is waiting, so hold on tight!"
Artyom whooped and threw the van into gear.
The old Bukhanka sputtered out of the airport with its engine rattling, heading into town.
But the scenery flashing past the windows was as alien and melancholy as could be, a stark contrast to the party-hard hardbass Artyom had blasting.
As they reached the outskirts of town, the asphalt lay cratered and shattered in patches, as if hit by artillery shells, left completely abandoned. Every time the van hit a pothole, Jihoon's butt bounced off the seat, and the gray, aged concrete buildings gave off such a sinister air that they looked ready to collapse at any moment.
Above all, what caught Jihoon's eye were the 'people' on the streets.
Women and the elderly could be seen here and there, but young, able-bodied 'men' were scarce as hen's teeth.
And the few men who did catch the eye weren't in any normal state either.
A man wandering the street staring blankly into empty space with unfocused, hollow eyes. A young man slumped on the roadside, shivering and muttering to himself. Men who flinched violently at the slightest noise and clutched their heads.
Every one of them looked like something inside had snapped clean — the grotesque picture of a mind gone entirely elsewhere.
Feeling a chill run down his spine, Jihoon asked Artyom cautiously.
"Um... what exactly is wrong with those people? Did they take something?"
At Jihoon's question, Artyom gave a bitter smile and turned the radio down a notch.
"Aw, come on, bro, you can figure it out just by looking, can't you? Those guys... went to the Ukelaistan front and barely made it back alive out of the meat grinder. When you spend twenty-four hours a day hounded by the sound of drones dropping grenades on your head, and you spend weeks rolling through shrapnel bursting on all sides... even the toughest bastard's brain is gonna melt. They look fine on the outside, but inside, they're already half dead."
At Artyom's flat explanation, Jihoon turned his gaze back out the window.
At a street corner, he could see war veterans in tattered old uniforms, missing an arm or a leg, begging for change.
Sitting in wheelchairs staring vacantly into the distance, their hollow eyes held nothing but emptiness and pain.
'Ha... was it really worth it? This war...'
Seeing firsthand the carnage he had only ever read about in online news, Jihoon felt a strange mixture of relief and bitterness wash over him.