Records Etched Upon Flesh
She stood before the sink for a long while. Under the fluorescent light, her reflection in the bathroom mirror looked tired and strangely unfamiliar. Shallow marks lingered across her collarbones, the upper curve of her breasts, and the base of her throat—traces left by lips, teeth, and nails from the night before. Most people might have felt embarrassment or a flutter of excitement, but Ha Yul felt neither. To her, her body was little more than a living record of time passed. Every fresh mark, every old scar, served as proof of moments already gone.
Her body was undeniably beautiful. Long, supple limbs, a slender waist flowing naturally into her hips, muscles honed by training yet never overly bulky. Her breasts held an attractive curve, and her thighs and calves were smooth, yet beneath the surface lay the coiled tension of a predator ready to spring. Still, closer inspection revealed other things—the marks of a hunter’s life. Scars.
A short, diagonal scar ran beneath her right ribs, an old wound from a blade. It dated back to the years when she had been younger and more impatient, when she had fought a mutated dog-type creature in a narrow stairwell. She had thought it dead, but the thing had thrashed in its final spasm, and the jagged end of a broken metal railing had raked across her side. People imagined only monster-inflicted wounds as battlefield marks, yet the hunt itself turned every environment into a weapon. Stairs, glass, rebar, nails, shattered doors, tangled wires—none of them needed fangs or claws to threaten a hunter.
Behind her left shoulder sat a round, deep scar where something had bitten and torn. Though faded now, the punctures from upper and lower canines remained visible up close, revealing exactly how much flesh had been ripped away. Ha Yul touched the spot once with her fingertip, her expression blank. The flesh had healed, but on days of foul weather or poor condition, a faint ache still lingered there.
Just below her navel, near the pelvic bone, several faint lines crossed her skin. A stranger might mistake them for old nail marks, but they were cuts from a blade’s edge—wounds left when martial artists wielding cold weapons clashed. Not deep enough to kill, yet not shallow enough to be mere grazes. That narrow margin changed everything about the resulting scar.
Three parallel white lines marked the outer side of her right thigh—claw marks from a mutated beast. She had bled heavily that day and limped for some time afterward, even after staunching the wound. Ha Yul did not particularly dislike that scar. It was proof of how she had lived.
She raised her hands before the mirror. Calluses covered her palms and knuckles. The inner sides of the fingers that gripped her karambit bore small, hardened pads from repeated pressure against the curved handle. The base of her palm, where she held an axe, had thickened from absorbing countless impacts. Swinging a hammer wore and tore other areas before they callused over again. Different weapons had left their habits layered across the same hands, like a beast bearing several kinds of teeth and claws at once.
She had scars from her own weapons as well. The Blood Fang Gate’s style—favoring karambits, axes, and hammers over swords or spears—could easily wound its user with the slightest mistake. In her younger, less skilled days, Ha Yul had injured herself far more often and bled more freely. What now looked impressive rested atop years of clumsy, painful practice.
She lifted her arm slightly to examine the inner side. Thin scars hid along her forearm, most of them defensive wounds—blows she had taken when complete evasion proved impossible. She preferred clean hunts built on repeated dodges and redirects, yet not every fight unfolded ideally. Faster-than-expected enemies, cramped spaces, multiple foes at once, blood and dust blinding the eyes—under such conditions, her arms became shields at the cost of taking the lethal blow themselves.
She stepped back and let her gaze drop lower in the mirror. When she inhaled, the spaces between her ribs widened slightly before contracting again on the exhale. Breath was a martial artist’s lifeline, but for Ha Yul it was more. A hunter’s footwork was not performed by the feet alone, nor could a cold weapon’s trajectory be drawn by the wrist alone. The air drawn into the lungs, the diaphragm’s contraction, the brief pressure in the abdomen, the subtle rotation of waist and hips—all had to align before she could deflect an attack and place her blade in the opening. Her body was therefore more than aesthetically pleasing; it was efficiently connected.
Yet the longer she stared into the mirror, the more alien she sometimes felt. Her eyes adjusted too quickly to darkness. Her ears caught sounds too faint for normal hearing. If the post-hunt excitement failed to settle, a hot, restless quality would begin circulating through her blood. Desire and violence, excitement and appetite drew strangely close in those moments. Martial artists from before the Great Mutation had called such states the harbinger of qi deviation. In the modern era they were labeled blood-qi overheating, neural hypersensitivity, and the early symptoms of emotional linkage overload.
Ha Yul met her own eyes. The dark brown irises in the mirror looked as calm as ever, yet beneath them lay a constant thin layer of fatigue and thirst. She killed monsters, not people. She fought to protect humans. That conviction still held, though it wavered at times—when she craved closer, deeper, hotter blood. When she teetered at the edge of the “line.” Each time, she had to pull herself back toward humanity through acts that restored human sensation: drink, sleep, another’s body heat, sex. Last night had been one such act.
She turned on the shower. Hot water streamed down, slowly washing away the sweat, scent, and alcohol of the previous night. Her soapy hands moved from shoulders to sides. Sensation differed subtly wherever the lather crossed a scar—some places felt almost nothing, others retained a faint numbness. The human body was honest that way. It refused to erase what one pretended to forget.
She shut off the water. Steam had clouded the mirror. The body that had been clear moments ago now showed only a vague outline behind the white moisture. Ha Yul wiped the glass once with her palm. Face and torso reappeared where the fog had been cleared. Her reflection blurred, then sharpened. In some way, it resembled the state of every martial artist in this world—outwardly still human, yet inwardly transforming into something else. Ha Yul had stood on that boundary longer than most. Others mutated visibly—eyes swelling, flesh splitting, bones protruding—while her changes were quieter. Her senses sharpened, the scent of blood lingered, and without another’s body heat she drifted further from human thoughts and impulses. She could still recognize people, still crave human warmth, still leave a sleeping lover’s side in silence. Yet she knew that “still” would not last forever.
She dried herself slowly with a towel, moving more gently over scars and indifferently across calluses. Before dressing, she glanced at the mirror once more. She confirmed what she already knew: she had been injured many times, had nearly died more than once, yet she could still be used. She could still grip a blade, still run, still kill monsters. And even now, she could remember another’s body heat. For the moment, that was enough.
Water droplets still fell slowly from the ends of Ha Yul’s hair when she stepped out of the shower. She paused beside the bed. Two women remained asleep there. Her gaze settled on the short-haired woman’s shoulder. Several faint marks lingered—proof of lips, teeth, and fingertips from the heated night, now reduced to red traces beneath the dawn light. A thin line beneath the neck marked where a nail had grazed; a round spot above the collarbone showed where lips had lingered. In a day or two, at most a few days, they would vanish. Time would return the skin to its original state, as though nothing had happened.
Ha Yul studied the marks for a moment. They belonged to an entirely different category from the scars etched into her own body—records of the past that sank deep beneath the skin and never disappeared. Both left traces on the surface, yet they seemed to speak different languages. Mornings like this sometimes left her with a strange feeling. Looking at the traces of passion on a sleeping body made her think of her own scars. One was left by the heat of night; the other was the result of struggling to survive. One faded naturally; the other remained buried deep within the flesh. Even so, Ha Yul continued to seek out another’s warmth and repeat the act. After a night of hunting, she would meet someone’s eyes in a bar or late-night lounge, exchange a few words, share body heat, and touch another’s skin until sleep claimed them both.
Personal desire existed, of course. Ha Yul did not deny that she enjoyed it. Yet it also served as confirmation that she remained human—proof that she could still remember the scent of a person rather than the smell of hot blood, that she could still fall asleep to the sound of another’s slow breathing and the feel of their warmth.
She sat carefully at the foot of the bed. The mattress dipped slightly, and the long-haired woman’s fingertips twitched. Ha Yul thought she might have woken, but the woman remained asleep. Ha Yul swept her wet hair to one side and looked toward the window. The light slipping through the curtains was brighter than expected. Morning had arrived without her noticing.
At that moment, the phone on the bedside table lit up. A short vibration cut through the room’s quiet. It belonged to the short-haired woman. The screen displayed a familiar red disaster alert—different color, different vibration, different weight from ordinary notifications. Ha Yul reflexively read the message.
The phone’s glow faintly illuminated the room. The loose, decadent atmosphere of moments ago cooled instantly with those few lines of text. Blood. Concrete dust. Debris. Shattered walls. Screams. It was time to return to the hunter’s face.