A Feast Without Context
The evening feast unfolded without any particular meaning. Passersby reveled in the alcohol and food, laughing and chattering among themselves. Sitting awkwardly among them was a strikingly handsome young man with an oddly refreshed expression on his face. He glanced around for a moment, then rose from his seat and headed home.
In the still-bustling festival grounds, a man wearing a fedora pulled low over his face hid behind a newspaper. The man in the fedora stared intently at the spot the handsome young man had just vacated. His fingers toyed with a pendant in his coat pocket—one shaped like a sickle and hammer intertwined—before he hurried off in the direction of the red-light district.
"Yozo Oba... I thought he'd been dragged off by the Special Higher Police. Who would've guessed..."
When I returned to my room after leaving the dokkaebi feast behind, I found a white bottle made of an unusual material sitting on the bed. Inside it was a generous amount of the usual sapuri. Beneath the bottle lay a sheet of high-quality paper with elegantly written characters.
Life. The only place you can run to is hell.
The dokkaebi's handwriting was that of a refined master calligrapher. To someone like me, who had spent his entire life running away, those words carried a terrifying weight—a kind of unspoken pressure that still lingers with me. Even now, I keep that note tucked safely inside my wallet.
After that, my days returned to their usual rhythm. Lately I hadn't encountered the dokkaebi at all. Perhaps the creature, now freed from its seal, was off wandering the world. Even though our meetings had stopped, the habit had become so ingrained that I often found myself jogging lightly for exercise or taking walks without even realizing it.
Come to think of it, ever since meeting that dokkaebi, I've become remarkably healthy. I've grown completely accustomed to using oil paints as well, and I've produced several paintings that I believe others might find pleasing. However, I still haven't painted my [Dokkaebi Portrait] in oils. I have no desire to let anyone see such a gloomy picture, and oil paintings are, by nature, difficult to hide away.
For the first time, I thought I might be experiencing what people call a peaceful life. Yet a corner of my heart remained occupied by a constant unease.
When the landlord's daughter handed me the letter addressed to me, I could no longer pretend to ignore the reality I had been avoiding.
14th, midnight. The bookstore.
[R.S.]
R.S... The secret communist reading club had sent me a message. In truth, within the central Marxist student activist circle, I was treated somewhat like a field commander. I never intended it, but the shadowy atmosphere of those people felt comfortable, so I simply went along with them. Because of my inability to refuse requests, I ended up taking on all sorts of tasks—in other words, running endless errands.
As I kept accepting those requests, what began as casual favors gradually escalated. Before I knew it, the party headquarters under the codename P was sending me relentless, grueling missions without pause. I simply couldn't endure it any longer. The burden was so overwhelming that I ran away, but that didn't make me feel any better.
Then I met Tsuneko and tried to die with her. The dokkaebi appeared... After that, I parted ways with Tsuneko, and the dokkaebi gained its freedom. Now my past karma had returned like a ghost, seizing my ankle once more.
My mind went blank. I collapsed onto the bed as if my legs had given out. Just then, I caught sight of the crimson sunset falling outside the window. It was the same sunset I had seen on the night I first met the dokkaebi. For a long time afterward, that scarlet light had terrified me. Now, strangely enough, it brought me a sense of peace.
Life. The only place you can run to is hell.
I read the dokkaebi's words again. Looking back, I had always been running. And on that night, the dokkaebi from hell had sent me back into this world. The dokkaebi had left to claim its freedom, and now the ghosts of my past had grabbed my ankle, once again placing me at the crossroads between life and hell.
14th, midnight. The bookstore.
[R.S.]
Until now, I had lived in hell. So this time, just once, I want to try living a real human life.