Blood Washes Blood

"Fuck. This bastard late again?"

Inside the convenience store, a mop handle drummed against the floor. Kim Hyunbae, the owner, dumped instant coffee into a paper cup with a twitchy hand and glanced up at the clock.

11:43 p.m.

The shift started at midnight. But that bastard was supposed to have the shelves stocked and the floor cleaned by ten. That was the law of Kim Hyunbae, tyrant of the convenience store, and the entire reason he had hired a piece of society's trash who happened to be disabled.

It had been going on for quite a while. The moment he heard the state paid a subsidy for employing the disabled, he had decided to milk the benefit for everything it was worth. And that was hardly all. Hire a disabled worker, they said, and the tax breaks came with it. Spread the word that he had taken in some cripple, and the neighborhood's pity would polish the store's image. There was no better advertising than that.

You really had to hand it to that one sharp little brain of his. Congratulating himself, he checked the clock again.

11:51.

"Worthless mutt. He sleeping right now? Or did he haul those stiff legs off to the bathroom?"

Call him? Impossible. The kid didn't own a phone. Seemed even his own house treated him like an unwanted burden. Well.

Taking in trash like that already makes those parents saints.

Pitying the people who had kept a cripple, Kim Hyunbae sighed as if he were bored and groped beneath the counter. A moment later he drew out his usual instrument of special discipline.

A mop handle. A lump of lead was fixed inside it.

"Won't move unless you hit him. Tch. There's a reason they used to beat those slave bastards back in the day."

At first he had felt a little sorry. After a beating, the kid worked properly, scared out of his wits. But somewhere along the way it had become fun.

A little too slow. Shelves stocked crooked. An answer that came a beat late. He picked up the handle out of habit, and the one who took the blows never answered with anything but I'm sorry.

"No mom, no dad, so there's nobody in this world to straighten you out. I'm your teacher. Your teacher."

Muttering to himself, he took his place at the counter with the mop handle in hand. His eyes followed the second hand.

11:59. A midnight shift.

"Son of a bitch!"

This time he would really break a leg bone. The kid was a cripple already. Even if it snapped again, nobody around here would think twice.

He gulped down the last of the instant coffee—and in that instant—

Ding!

The bell on the door rang, too clear, as if it had been played through a speaker. Kim Hyunbae turned his head and only then took in the figure standing in the doorway.

"...The hell. That bastard...?"

The face was familiar, no question. Deep shadows under the eyes. The sickly look, the limp, the way he barely dragged himself along—the disabled brat he knew. But the boy now... no. The man was different.

His back was straight. He wasn't limping. The puzzlement lasted only a moment.

"Fuck! What time do you think it is, you worthless crippled piece of shit!"

He smothered the strangeness under rage. The shout came thick with irritation, and his grip tightened on the mop handle. Today, too, adrenaline surged at the thought of laying into this broken bastard with it.

Late again. Needs a savage beating before he gets his head on straight.

As always, this deformed excuse for an employee would not voice a single complaint, no matter the abuse or the blows. Knowing that, Kim Hyunbae set himself to swing. And then—

"...Huh?"

What stopped him was the cripple's eyes.

For an instant Kim Hyunbae froze in those pupils. Eyes that had always wavered, unfocused. Always cowed, always wary, always cast down as if something were chasing him. Now that look had changed.

Alive. More precisely, the eyes of a predator with power behind them. The moment their gazes met, the arm about to swing locked in place.

"Hey, you crazy bastard? You looking me in the eye and what are you—"

But he resisted. The fact that he had flinched at a cripple's stare made him rebel, and he swung the handle with all his strength. The next instant—

Thup.

The handle stopped. It had not stopped on its own. That hand—the hand of the one he had called a cripple—had caught it.

"Nngh!"

He thrashed. The grip was absurdly solid. The handle did not budge.

"Y-you bastard... let go. I said let go!"

He tried to shove. He tried to yank it free. It would not come loose at all. It was fixed so completely that he wondered when he had grown this weak.

And then that presence lifted its head.

"Hup!"

Meeting those eyes, Kim Hyunbae's heart dropped like a stone. A fundamental instinct spoke. If he did not look away now, he would die.

He retreated two paces on instinct. His foot caught, and he sat down hard on the floor.

"U-uah...?!"

In that instant a crushing grip tore the handle from him. It was not just a handle. For years it had been the symbol the store's owner swung like power itself—a tool of violence.

Now the hand holding that tool had changed. The one he had thought a cripple lifted the mop handle in one hand, slowly winding his grip around it, and spoke.

"Had a good time, didn't you?"

The voice was low and dry. No hatred in it. No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anger. That was what frightened Kim Hyunbae more.

"H-hey, you... put that down! This isn't a joke! I'll report you. I'll call the cops, the cops..."

He never finished.

"Mmmph!"

A hard hand was no longer on the mop handle. It was clamped over his mouth.

Crrk.

The pressure felt as if it would split his jaw. He could not even groan properly. And then—

He thrashed in the air. Lifted clean off the floor, in a pain that felt as if his neck would tear free, all he could do was kick at empty space.

"If you can... go ahead."

Kim Hyunbae had judged wrong. The eyes of Han Seungwoo, the one he had thought a cripple, were not a predator's eyes. They were the eyes of a hunter who hunted even predators.

I can see it. The bastard's evil. His Karma. Kim Hyunbae. It seemed his atrocities had not been mine alone.

My fingertips tightened around the mop handle, heavy with the weight of it. This shaft, loaded with lead, was no simple cleaning tool. For years it had been a symbol of the power that crushed the weak, a symbol of violence. Now its owner had changed.

"Had a good time, didn't you?"

He must have. Look at me. The corner of my mouth was rising on its own.

I was glad. How could I not be? The strong man who had tormented me was caught in my hand and made weak. The reason the strong trample the weak—perhaps it is for a joy like this.

I looked straight into the face of Kim Hyunbae, the boss who had styled himself the strong one, and raised the handle.

Thud!

The first blow took the right cheekbone. A pleasant rupture. It rang deep, like an old wound splitting open.

Crack!

The second was the mouth. The lips that had mocked me. The place that filthy tongue had played.

Spatter!

Blood and teeth flew. Gripping the bent handle, I dropped to one knee over him, blocked the path he was trying to crawl, and crushed the back of his neck.

"S... stop..."

At those words a question rose in me.

"When I told you to stop, what did you do?"

"I..."

"You said a cripple only understands when he's hit. Every time I begged you to stop, you hit harder."

So.

Thud. Crack!

I gave it back the same way. Asking him to stop was no different from asking to be hit more. The vicious beating had only ended when the pain was swallowed in silence, the eyes lowered like a slave's, and the body submitted.

Thud!

So I did not stop. This was not simple revenge.

Controlling my strength is easy.

Just as when I had beaten the beast a little while ago, I was testing how finely I could tune force. It was not as hard as I had thought. This thing called Awakening seemed to adapt quickly, so its user could wield it with ease. As if it had been my body from the start. As if it had been my ability from the start.

I did not think I needed any more experiments in control.

"Ugh, please... please, stop..."

Unable to endure what kept coming, the bastard begged.

A trickle. He had lost his mind so completely that a yellow stream ran down between his pant legs.

I watched that sight without a word.

"Talk."

"...Wh-what...?"

"Everyone besides me. Everything you did to them."

The Eye of Judgment had already decided he was a villain worse than a beast. That meant he had done worse harm to society, and to other people.

I wanted to confirm it. Whether this Eye of Judgment truly saw malice for what it was. If I confirmed that, I would be sure of this power that had appeared so suddenly.

"I-I don't know. I just ran a convenience store..."

Thud!

This time I put a little more into it. I struck hard enough to crack the shin, so the pain would be worse.

"Aaagh!"

The bastard shook his head and sobbed.

"R-runaways... I was just going to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠use them for a bit. Just... have them do a little work..."

"You didn't pay them properly."

"..."

"Say it. With your own mouth."

"...N-no pay..."

He closed his eyes. But even beneath those lids, a foul lie squirmed.

Thud!

Without fail, the handle of discipline stamped his knee.

"Aaaaaagh!"

I listened to the scream in silence. It was not merely a sound of pain. It was the scream of a man who had never been punished, tasting fairness for the first time.

"The disabled... if you use them, the country gives you money... so I worked them twelve hours a day, didn't even give them lunch..."

"How many."

"Five... six... one of them collapsed. Went to the hospital..."

The words poured out. Just as I had thought. Just as the Eye of Judgment had told me. The bastard was vicious.

For years he had filled his belly by using the socially weak, people with nowhere else to turn. No pay. Overtime as a given. And one of them had died under the workload and the beatings.

A disabled man with no family to begin with, so asking after that death had been nothing. No proper investigation. The death was ruled an illness and closed.

I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠seized his arm. And—

Crrk!

Faster than the scream, the elbow bent the wrong way. The sound was clear enough to be almost cheerful.

"Gaaaaah!"

A shriek closer to a beast's howl than a human scream burst out of him. I did not speak. I only lifted the handle again and brought it down once more, precisely.

Thud. Crack!

Bone broke. Flesh burst. Vessels tore.

"Ghk—gaaaah!"

Kim Hyunbae writhed on his stomach in agony. I watched that insect-like movement carefully and drove a blow into the inner ligament of the knee as if pinning a point. A strike aimed exactly between muscle, nerve, and joint ruined his body. At last—

Slack. Arms and legs hung loose, as if every one of them had failed.

"Uah, uaaaaah—"

Terror at being unable to hold his own body tore a wail out of him.

I did not smile. Revenge is not a choice. It is only a means of making things fair. Both his legs and one arm were completely ruined. The nerves were torn.

"Live as the disabled person you hated so much."

"And with those eyes, watch clearly how filthy and sickening the life was in which you trampled the weak."

I did not kill him this time. I knew that living as what he loathed most—the weak, the disabled—would be the finest revenge. It was a sentence heavier than death.

And then—

Killing was not the only condition for absorbing Karma. True to the name of the Judge, it seemed that delivering a fitting judgment upon a target allowed the Karma to be taken in.

"Good. Very good!"

Nothing could have pleased me more. It had to be so. For some people, death itself can be rest. I had wanted to punish them in the most painful way possible, and I had worried that doing so might keep me from absorbing the Karma. Now I no longer needed to worry.

The most fitting revenge and judgment upon a target. Through that, I would absorb Karma and grow stronger still. Strong enough to dispose of the stinking trash polluting society.

The convenience store's glass door opened with care.

Ding!

The bell rang, dark and subdued. The detective surveying the scene found the victim sprawled on the floor and immediately grimaced.

"What in the world is this?"

The victim, Kim Hyunbae, was still breathing, but he could not even moan. Both arms and both legs were bent at bizarre angles, broken bone tearing through the skin. Even the forensics team that stepped inside flinched and drew back.

"Preserve the scene. Start the examination. Now."

The detective gave the order in a low voice, and forensics moved fast. Blood had spattered and scattered across the floor and around the shelves, and the traces of the victim crawling like an animal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠remained intact.

"Weapon found?"

"Yes. This."

What the officer carefully lifted in both hands was a mop handle. A lump of lead had been set into the end, and Kim Hyunbae's blood and tissue still clung to the shaft.

"He got it with his own tool. This wasn't impulse. It was thoroughly planned."

Looking over the scene, the detective slowly raised his head.

"Detective... there's something here."

An officer searching a corner called out in a trembling voice. Every gaze turned to one place. In front of the register, where Kim Hyunbae's blood had pooled—the convenience store floor. Following the trail of dripping blood, clear, vivid writing appeared.

The detective bent and read.

A short, brutal phrase. Those blood-soaked words filled the detective's vision.

"Blood washes blood..."

The head of forensics murmured it, holding his breath.

"This isn't simple assault. It's a message."

The marks were as clear as if someone had written them carefully with a brush. Someone had set those words down with a definite purpose. There was no doubt of it. The detective rose slowly and looked around.

"Someone has begun a judgment."

The air settled, heavy. Everyone felt it. This was not merely a personal revenge. It was a declaration aimed at something larger.

"This is going to be a headache."

"This probably isn't the end. It's only just begun."

With the detective's hardened voice, the scene sank into silence. The words written on the floor gave off a dark light, like the overture to a cruel drama of revenge yet to unfold.