The Name Reborn in Flame

“……”

The rooftop was quiet. From this height the world below looked peaceful, as if nothing at all had happened, and he leaned against the railing for a while, watching it.

A dry wind passed over him. His eyelids, parched to the point of cracking, trembled under their own weight.

An empty pill bottle sat in his hand — proof of another day he had only barely endured. Nothing was left. Not the medicine. Not money. Not family. Not a single person.

He took out his phone and opened his messenger, his texts, his social feeds, one after another, for the last time. There was no message of any kind. Still, not one person had asked if he was all right.

How had it come to this?

Three years ago, when his ex-girlfriend announced that she was leaving him, he went without warning to a police station and was reported. Sexual assault. With that single phrase, his life was thrown out like garbage.

Cleared of charges? That came later. From the very beginning, he was the one who had to prove the accusation false, and the police treated him as a criminal all the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠same.

“You did have sex, though. So then…”

It went into the record. The brand of a suspect under investigation for sexual assault. But something worse than the brand was waiting — the day the story broke as news.

He had never said those things. He was not that kind of person. The articles wrote him that way anyway, and they exposed enough to identify him outright.

Reporter Kwon Ayoung. Beneath the banner of an exclusive, she was a woman who stirred every provocation she could find into the words the victim’s side. Far from checking a single fact, she never so much as placed a phone call before driving him into the role of a potential criminal.

That was when he learned it. How terrifying the power of the press could be. The day the articles ran, the company fired him on the spot.

A major corporation, the kind everyone dreamed of entering — and it carried out the dismissal without a procedure, without a review of any kind.

“It’s you, isn’t it? We can’t keep a rapist in this company.”

Due process? Whatever of it existed on paper was nothing but a shell.

The time that followed was, quite literally, refuse. He could not go outside. Afraid someone might recognize him, he grew frightened even of lighting the gas, and every day he rotted in bed, sunk in pills.

And two years later, the police called.

No charges.

“The woman’s statement contradicts itself, and the CCTV shows no sign of any assault.”

Even hearing that, he felt nothing. A correction? There was none.

An apology? Reporter Kwon Ayoung only deleted the piece she had written. She moved on to a new crime, a new provocation, and the following month she put out another exclusive.

Sensational headlines. Manufactured controversy. The traffic that came of both. Her career climbed without a pause.

His life, by contrast, came apart.

She had not committed murder. And yet she had unmistakably killed a person with a pen. No one — no one — judged her for it.

So today he had no choice but to come here. If he simply disappeared, even like this, then maybe someone would at least investigate the death.

He stepped slowly forward. One more step and he would fall, and this life that had been a hell would end…

A chime — a disaster alert? No. It was different. Scarlet text, and a video pushed onto his phone beneath it.

“Ah…!”

The gasp broke out of him before he knew it. How could he forget? The one-man protests demanding a correction, the place he had visited more times than he could count — that lobby filled the screen.

In truth, Public Judgment was not something that could be used on a whim. It couldn’t be.

You have to win the sympathy of the majority. Otherwise…

Merely manifesting the trait consumed a vast quantity of Karma. Add the expansion of area and channel, and the sharing of the Eye of Judgment, and the cost rose past a baseline of three hundred thousand Karma.

If this judgment were thought unjust, or if it failed to draw the sympathy of those watching, all of that Karma would be thrown into empty air.

But I knew. They might not kill with guns and knives, yet there would be far more who killed with a pen — and the victims crushed beneath the pens they swung so recklessly would far outnumber the dead of any war. So I did not hesitate. I manifested Public Judgment.

“Hands up!”

“Don’t move!”

The thought shattered. Straight ahead, security guards in pale-blue shirts under bulletproof vests were swarming in.

Perhaps because I had set the whole world on edge. There were a great many of them — security, and bodyguards besides.

“……”

I narrowed my eyes and lifted my head. And then I leaned my body in.

With that single brief breath, the world rang. Agility — it had already undergone Transcendence twice.

This was the realm of an anomalous art, a state that had broken through every boundary and every limit.

“Wh-what… where…?!”

While their empty gazes raked the air, my fingertips snapped the muzzle of the first guard’s gun.

The second. The third. The fourth. Their weapons were nothing but shells.

The guns fell in pieces, and I looked down on them with a cold gaze.

“The gun— the gun snapped…!”

“M-monster…?!”

Some dropped where they stood. Some stumbled back. But I went no further. Their sins were not stained deeply enough to merit judgment.

Leaving the uproar behind, I crossed the lobby as if I had never been among them. In that moment—

“Aaaah!”

“Gyaaah!”

At my appearance, at that power which called the Judge to mind, the hall became chaos itself.

The crowd surged. Shoes tangled, papers scattered, coffee cups spun through the air. Every one of them was trying to flee from something. From me.

But no one can run from me.

The world… stopped.

A single sheet of paper halted on its way to the floor. Coffee hung scattered in midair and froze there. Someone’s mouth stopped, shaped around the words help me.

Silence. A world brought to a halt. Time permitted to me alone. Through that gap, I walked.

There was a time I had thought that way. That the ones below were guiltless. That they had only followed orders, that they couldn’t help it, that they had merely done as they were told. Cut off the rotten heads up top, I had told myself, and the rest would purify themselves.

But no.

That had been arrogance. The human heart is like a sheet of blank paper. Let a single drop seep into it — a single malice — and it can never return to white.

Look.

That vicious malice of theirs. They, too… were accomplices.

So the belief that cutting away only the top would purify the rest was nothing but an empty faith. Let one evil vanish, and another evil takes its place.

Therefore everyone eroded by malice had to be cleared away. Subordinate, middle manager, or the youngest reporter on the floor — the moment they sold their conscience, they were exceptions no longer.

If they had wounded others with a pen, then they would have to receive the very same wound.

I walked. Parting a density that trembled like ripples, I went at my ease, as if my fingertips were merely nudging aside a sheet of paper that brushed my shoulder. The air before me clung like jelly, and the silence hung heavy, a transparent wall filling the void.

“……”

I swept the surroundings quickly. Then I moved, hunting the remnants of sin.

The first. A middle-aged man in an immaculate suit, an expensive watch on his wrist.

I severed both arms, so that lies would never again leave those hands — nor any article capable of insulting a victim, or the family left behind.

Next.

I cut out the eyes that could not see the truth. He would never again look upon an article. Never again look upon a lie.

And the next.

“……”

A young reporter. A fresh face, a newcomer who looked as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if he had not yet learned how to wear the suit. And yet above him, too, malice bloomed red — no. Darker still.

“……”

A beginner’s heart? A mistake? That does not become an absolution. He receives judgment exactly equal to the sin he committed. Exactly equal to the harm he did to others.

The price of his sin—

—was every one of his ten fingers broken, and that venomous tongue cut away, and his eyes with it. I was laying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠down judgments fitted to the nature of each crime when it happened.

“……!”

Crimson text, vivid before my eyes.

A young woman. And yet her sins could stand beside those of any common murderer, and beside men of power who had sacrificed countless lives.

The crime keywords that surfaced at once left no choice but to nod.

Here… was the queen of the parasites. And those sins began, one by one, to live again as the History of Judgment.

…Those words. Every one of them something she had actually said. Logs left behind in a messenger. Transcripts. Sentences inside articles. And the traces of a murder carried out with a pen.

“……”

I looked down at her and did not move. The hands that had written death so lightly, as if it were only natural. The tongue that had taken someone’s life apart, sharp and without responsibility. The eyes that had destroyed justice without feeling a thing. All of them were hers.

“…Kwon Ayoung.”

When I spoke her name, the time that had stopped began to flow again.

A murmur. Screams. Confusion. And her eyes, still alive.

But those eyes would never see the world again. Because now, I would carry out the judgment.

“Wh-what…?!”

She jolted in horror at the touch on her body. But it was too late.

I circulated my qi and called up flame.

“Wh-what is this… put it out. What are you doing!”

The blue flame that began to burn from the tips of her fingers was not there to burn flesh. It wrapped each nerve, one by one, and seared her as if cooking her slowly — and it did so before the smell of charring skin ever rose.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

A scream of living nerves bursting rang through the hall. One arm blackened, curled, and twisted. Her fingers warped and shriveled like scraps of paper, and now the flame passed her elbow and climbed for the shoulder.

That fire was not simply meant to burn. It was meant to make her remember, with her whole body and to the very end, the sins she had committed. The most fitting judgment for the woman who had pushed her victims into a living hell.

“Ah— ah—”

Kwon Ayoung could no longer form words. Her jaw had melted. Her teeth were burning down.

Her abdomen melted. Her organs cooked. Blood vessels dried and split with a crackle. She would be feeling the sensation of her flesh falling away.

While she was still alive. Undergoing, in the flesh, the hell the other victims had suffered.

“Ugh— ughhh—”

The instant her eyes rolled back, one leg was eaten completely by the fire. But the flame of qi never burned quickly. It was a curse that deliberately left her limbs, her senses, precise and intact until the last, forcing the pain to be remembered clear.

Flame wrapped the remaining leg as well, and all of Kwon Ayoung’s body burned away, the way paper soaks slowly through.

She was not dead yet. In that state, inside a pain that did not stop, she burned while she lived.

The moment of judgment.

“……”

It was a message I had never expected. And there it was.

His breath caught hard in his throat. Somewhere in the wreck of his chest, something burst. It was not a sob. It was not a scream. It was not pain. It was only this.

“…Thank you. Truly… thank you…”

He clutched the phone in shaking hands. The tears would not stop. Words he had not heard once in all the time he was alive. Words not a single person had ever given him.

The Judge proved those words with what he did. The reporter who had brought the whole of his life down. Kwon Ayoung. That devil of a woman was burning now, before his eyes.

The face collapsing as she screamed inside the flames. It was the face that had once smiled at him from a news screen, calling him a criminal, a monster, trash.

“You… you did it. What the world never did…”

He dropped to his knees. He drew in close against the railing. The man’s face never appeared on the screen, but he knew.

That this was someone who had stepped forward for those lonelier than anyone, for the ones who had been thrown away. No — perhaps the Judge, too, had been one of them.

With a trembling hand he looked at the screen. There in the lower right, beside the broadcast, a small icon read Donate. He pressed it without thinking.

Out of gratitude he wanted to give something in return, but he owned nothing at all. And then, suddenly—

“…Would even my life be possible?”

To that question—

“……”

Everything is given a price. However precious a life may be, not every life can be the same. He faltered for a moment at that fact. Then he pressed his finger, without hesitation.

“…If I offer my life, I can be more of a strength to him, can’t I?”

A moment later, the System answered.

He watched the screen. The Judge — a man he did not know — was judging the guilty. Judging the wicked.

A thing he had imagined only in dreams. He wanted to help him do it. If this feeble life, already broken past any hope of mending, could be offered and become even a little help to him—

And so he gladly offered his own life. To spend, on something that meant more, a life that ought simply to have disappeared.

“I… I don’t have anything. Truly nothing. No family, no job, no future… And yet, right now, being able to give you something — I’m so, truly so grateful.”

He murmured it as if to himself.

“I want to repay this grace. Because of you, a little of my injustice… has been washed clean. Sincerely… sincerely, thank you.”

“I beg you — from now on as well, for people like me, for the weak, in the place of the victims — please carry out that dream of a thing. The warning that if you commit a sin, you will surely be punished.”

With those words—

A small vibration, and the screen of his phone went dark.

Wind came across the roof. The sky felt, somehow, clear.

“Haha…”

Even inside a life going out, he was smiling. A chance to offer thanks — something no one had ever given him while he lived. He left that behind, and at the end he drew his last breath very quietly, more peacefully than anyone.

A person whose name had not even been spoken by anyone. A quietly forgotten existence turned his life into a donation, and became strength for someone’s justice.

The Judge, and everyone watching the judgment, remembered him at last.

Kim Seonghun. A name the world had forgotten came back to life that day, within the flame of judgment.