Never Leave My Fence Alive

A broadcast van stood on the grounds of Taeun High School, and before it the police brass and the faculty had drawn themselves up in a line. They were waiting for someone. He arrived. The man everyone had been waiting for was Lee Joong-ik.

A five-term National Assemblyman, and the name most often put forward as the next director of the National Intelligence Service. Today he had come to Taeun High School, the place where his son had died. Yet what hung about his face was something quieter than devastation.

"First… my sincere thanks to the faculty, who guided my son onto the right path."

The voice was heavy. He bowed his head, and a storm of flashes burst from the cameras in the reporters' hands.

"As a father who has lost his child, my grief is beyond words. But I believe the sorrow of everyone gathered here is no less."

"So that nothing like this is ever repeated… I, too, will fulfill my duty as a member of the National Assembly."

The words were short, and even the small motions of his hands were careful. His eyes alone did not waver.

"The same is true of our friends in the police. Heavy and difficult as this case is, you responded swiftly. On behalf of the bereaved, I offer you my heartfelt thanks."

After everything that had unfolded at the school, the principal of Taeun High could not bring himself to step forward. He only bowed his head, deep. It was Lee Joong-ik who extended a hand first.

He did not blame the school where it had happened. Only this.

"The students who were harmed… no. I mean to meet the victims' families myself."

"The place my son lived his life—I want to hear, without fail, what those children and their parents have to say."

Refined remarks, and a grief held carefully in check. The public felt the dignity of a national leader in his bearing, and the press was already setting the headlines that would praise him.

Behind the black soundproof glass, the door had barely shut before the still air split open. Lee Joong-ik drew a long breath. Loosening the tie that had been choking him, he growled, low, like an animal.

"…Fuck."

A single newspaper lay in front of him. His son's face was printed there beneath a headline that called the boy a tragic victim. Lee Joong-ik laughed—a twisted laugh.

"A victim? That brain-dead little shit?"

He seized the paper. In that grip the pressure of tendon and bone, left over from his years in uniform, was still entirely alive.

"They don't even know what that bastard did, and they're scrawling this and calling it an article. A tragedy? Before they use a word like that, they ought to crack open his record."

The newspaper crumpled at once. The paper broke like bone, as if he were crushing his son's face.

"He was an idiot from the beginning. Born without the faintest idea what he was, riding his background like a packhorse and thinking that made him somebody."

He shook out his hand and looked through the window.

"To think a mutt could be born between tigers…"

The secretary clamped his mouth shut and only dropped his head. He said nothing. When the man broke like this, any reaction was forbidden.

"Sticks his dick in wherever it'll fit, snorts whatever's around, drinks himself blind and gets behind a wheel—so of course he dies like a dog in the end."

His pupils trembled, faintly. But the anger never rose into a shout. It seethed low and hot, like molten iron.

"My son? I can just have another. There's a frozen sample of the same seed put away somewhere. None of them are human anyway. Stuff them in one after another and one of them is bound to live."

He tilted his head, forcing something down until the nape of his neck went stiff.

"But…"

The tail of the word stretched out.

"I don't know how that piece of trash died."

"Whoever did it. Whatever the reason…"

One hand closed slowly into a fist. Across those angular knuckles and the veins standing over them, a soldier's past showed through.

His son's death? The boy had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never even amounted to something expendable. If anything, he had been a stain on the man's name, and at this point it was just as well he was dead.

But there was a fact that could not be forgiven. Someone had dared to touch the mutt that lived inside his own fence.

So he took out his phone and called a number he had saved. The line picked up almost before it could ring.

"And."

He drew a low breath. In that moment the blood-nature he had hidden until now showed itself. He did not rely on anything so trivial as the police. On the contrary, he meant to stop cold the investigation of the fools muddying the waters on his side, before it could even get underway.

He hung up. Then he lowered his head, and at last, barely above a whisper, he muttered.

"A mutt died. A thing like that can be buried."

"But…"

He opened his eyes. The look in them belonged less to a man than to a beast. A predator.

The air along the mountainside was sharp and rough. Blades of grass stood on edge, heavy with dew, and thornbushes reached for me without any warning. But they never touched me.

Branches whipped past. Thorns keen enough to tear cloth. Even the stones that bucked up underfoot. Not one of them reached my skin.

A soft hush of light—and a pale, faint radiance was wrapped around my body. I could not take hold of it with my hand, and yet I felt it, unmistakably.

For all that it was called armor, it was neither metal nor cloth. Between skin and air, a white membrane barely visible to the eye flowed along the lines of my body.

It was exactly as the description said. A sharp branch grazed my shin and left only a dry rasp of friction before it slid away. Not me—the armor took the blow first.

A fine reward, and all from a simple whim.

It was not something I had gained through the art of enlightenment, or by strengthening a trait.

Jung Taesik. He owned nothing, but the core of him was unshakable, and he was a virtuous soul who had stacked good deeds one upon another. Just as in the subway fire, saving someone good could be repaid with a special ability. I had sensed it before. This time I understood it for certain: the reward for saving a virtuous person seemed bound to the circumstances that person had been trapped in.

Those quiet eyes. A will like a pillar that had not collapsed, not even at the end. That child had not been weak. If he had truly been weak, he would have died long ago. And yet he had lived. No—he had gone on living.

He had overcome something deeper than any wound an ordinary person could dare to imagine. And so this armor was not the power to take no wounds. It was the power to endure them and still refuse to break—a shield made from the blood and the tears that child had shed.

An unexpected reward. I cut the sentiment short.

I drew a deep breath. Mountain air wet my lungs. My body settled light, and my will locked hard into place.

I had come to Taeun High to take revenge on the man named Park Geuntae, and also to track the other targets of my judgment. Through the strengthened History of Judgment, I had read the bastard's memories. Among them was what I wanted. People still in contact, master and students.

"…Kang Minseok. Jung Suhyeok. Jo Jaejin."

I rolled the names in my mouth as if I meant to chew them apart.

The three who had led the torment against me in my school days. What they had done was nothing a student that age should have been able to conceive—nothing less than the erasure of a person. Park Geuntae had played his part, of course. But it was those three, and their viciousness, that I could not endure. In the end I had no choice but to drop out.

I… had not been strong, the way Jung Taesik was. I… had knelt to evil.

My fist clenched, joints creaking. Every time the past rose, the anger grew with it. And that anger—

It burst out over the rutted dirt. My whole body launched. I planted a foot on the next tree and sprang again. The heavier the revenge became, the lighter my body grew, and the faster I ran.

That was what they thought.

It's nothing special.

Everyone did it. Kang Minseok, Jung Suhyeok, Jo Jaejin. Beneath the title of college student, they believed a childish lapse could always be prettied up later as a mistake of the past.

The first lapse was drink. A medical student could go mad from studying, they said, and so had to be let loose to match—and on that pretext the drinking went on night after night. Seniors filled the juniors' glasses. Juniors flattered their seniors' moods. The coquetry and the atmosphere that slipped in between them hardened, at some point, into hierarchy, and hierarchy soon became power.

Next came the drugs. At ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠first it was a joke.

"Everybody does it these days. They say if you go right behind the department office, it's easy to get."

Curiosity turned into laughter, and laughter soon became habit. Behind on an assignment, worn out from clinicals, they tipped a pill into their mouths and said it like a boast.

"Take this and you're really not tired."

Up to there, by their measure, they were still on the decent side of the line. A boundary that went by the name of morality had always been that blurred, and that personal.

Drunk driving was the same. Kang Minseok always drove a new car, and Jo Jaejin was not afraid to take the wheel after drinking. Jung Suhyeok always climbed into the back beside them, laughing, perfectly at ease.

The police? Of course they were caught, more than once. But if his father's lawyer put in a word, or a prosecutor his uncle knew, that night passed without incident. An ordinary lapse, then. The sort of thing everyone else did too.

The problem always starts there.

"We'll be fine."

From the moment those words stuck to the tongue, an accident comes without warning, and entirely naturally.

That day was the same. The middle of the night. To blow off stress they had danced themselves breathless at a club, and they had drunk. Jo Jaejin took the wheel. Kang Minseok sat in the passenger seat. Jung Suhyeok giggled in the back, rolling a pill around in his mouth.

The drinks? They had only had a little. The pills? Those were just because they were tired. The driving? The road was right there, and it was late, so there would hardly be anyone out. Clutching a license that went by the name of rationalization, they stepped on the accelerator.

And, with truly rotten luck, a family was there.

A mother had stepped out of a car holding her child's hand, and a father was taking luggage from the trunk. They had only just arrived home and were unloading—an utterly ordinary, quiet summer night. Soaked in liquor and pills, the three could not tell the road from someone's doorstep.

Screeech!

The tires cried out far too late. Eyes steeped in drugs could not read the night, and the hands on the wheel slipped. He hit the brakes, but drink and pills made the reaction slow.

And so—

Impact. Light burst. The crack of glass tangled with a scream and blew apart.

It was… a terribly unlucky thing.

A warm wind brushed a cheek. Summer-night air cooler than any air conditioner, and three people quietly looking at one another, smiling.

"Did you have fun?"

The father asked. The child in the back seat nodded and clenched both fists tight.

"Yeah! So much fun! Next time I want to play even longer!"

"Then next time Mom and Dad will have to take one more day off."

"Really? Promise?"

Hands on the wheel, the man met the child's eyes through the mirror, and the woman in the passenger seat smiled as she looked out the window. It had been a long time since they had traveled as a family. They had been to the sea, eaten seafood, and stopped at the aquarium the child loved. For once everyone had laughed, and there had been no arguments. Today had been, quite simply, a perfect day.

The child's bag was full of seashells and stickers, and dozens of family photos were saved ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the mother's phone. And in the father's heart there rested, quietly, a breath of relief—the sense that they were living well.

"We're home. Let's get the bags out."

The father stopped the car and opened the trunk. The mother took the child's hand with care and stepped down.

"Whew. We really played hard. Let's sort the photos tomorrow."

"Okay! The one of me looking at the fish underwater…"

That was when it happened.

Screeech!

The tires screamed. A light leapt out of nowhere—from far off, far ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠too fast, far too sudden. White headlights tore the black night, and inside that light, death was running straight at them.

"…!"

It was instinct. The mother wrapped herself around the child, and the father threw his body in front of them. He shoved with his shoulder. He gathered them in with his arms. In that brief instant he put his life first, to keep the two of them safe.

"Oh God!"

The father's scream, torn raw with the will to protect his family, cut through the dark. The child's eyes went wide.

Crash!

A rupturing boom. A scream. Glass breaking. The smell of something burning.

And… light.

A dark side street, where only the streetlamps held the darkness off. But in the instant of the collision, a white light came down out of the sky. The child saw it. In the moment before death, someone descended from somewhere and stood in its path.

Reflexes difficult to believe of a human being. A figure wrapped in light landed out of the air and took the car with his whole body. The car was flung back with a roar. A bumper tore free. Tire tracks ripped into the ground. And a presence stood there, unmoved, splitting the dust.

He was not a person. Light streamed out behind him, and his eyes looked straight ahead. His fist was closed. There was no sound of breath. The sight of him was like…

"…An angel?"

That one soft word slipped from the child's mouth. It was a truth no one could deny.

If the world had heroes, this was how they would appear. To save someone. To stop a death. A person who walked out of the light and asked nothing in return.

That night, a family did not die.

That night—

The angel declared judgment upon the sinners.