Nothing but a Beast
The kick came flying at him with terrifying speed.
The man had probably trained in taekwondo — or maybe kickboxing. It was a genuinely fast kick. A genuinely fast kick, but Yoo Kang-soo had already been waiting for it. He had expected the man in his thirties to strike first.
He was no longer a soldier. Nor was he an insurance investigator hunting down fraud. He was nothing more than a beast — a man who had been forging his body in the detention center in preparation for prison, working out every chance he got.
Kang-soo was not the type to stupidly dwell on the past or sink into despair. What was done was done. What mattered was what came next. At least, that was how Kang-soo saw it. He had survived this far the way a weed survives — on nothing but the raw instinct not to die.
He waited for the attack. The moment it came, he caught the man's foot in his hand, surged forward, and drove a fist hard into the man's abdomen. Then, without a pause, he jammed the edge of his hand into the inner thigh. Three movements, flowing like water — fused into a single, unbroken motion.
There had been people, once, who called Hapkido by another name: the martial art of rotation. Its techniques of attack and defense relied far more often on curves and circular motion than on straight lines. Plenty of people in the past had dismissed Hapkido as little more than a haphazard mash-up of taekwondo and judo. That was a dangerously ignorant way to think about it.
Hapkido was a martial art that had taken something close to a killing art — one designed to snap joints, wrench them from their sockets, twist them until they tore — and tried, as much as possible, to refine it into a sport. And so, in the end, the number of Hapkido dojos had dwindled dramatically compared to thirty years ago. There were no official statistics, but thirty years ago you could find one or two Hapkido schools in just about any neighborhood. These days, you had to hunt for one with your eyes on fire.
Kang-soo spun his body in a rapid rotation and drove the strike home. The man in his thirties let out a short, choked scream and crumpled to the floor.
"Ugh—"
The sound tore from him as he simply rolled onto the ground. But Kang-soo did not stop there. He began kicking the fallen man's lower body without mercy. Two kicks to the legs. One to the face. When the man threw both hands up to cover his head, Kang-soo finished with a kick to the gut. And when the man curled up like a pill bug, Kang-soo planted a foot on his throat and spoke.
Kang-soo pressed down harder on the man's throat with his foot and opened his mouth again.
"You... you gonna talk down to me again?"
"N-no..."
The man in his thirties spoke through a face twisted in pain. Kang-soo looked at the rest of the inmates and spoke again.
"Any son of a bitch playing games with a sharpened toothbrush... I'll gouge your eyes out with it. Anyone in this room I catch grinding a toothbrush... I'll pull your eyes out and snap your arms."
"........."
"I said answer me, you fucking bastards."
"Yes..."
Answers came from all around the room. Not a single inmate met Kang-soo's eyes. They had all just watched the man who looked like the cell boss — a gangster in his thirties — get beaten like a dog without even putting up a real fight. Every last one of them had their eyes on the floor.
"You. Come here."
Kang-soo sat down cross-legged in the center of the room — the spot where the man in his thirties had been sitting — and spoke. The man hesitated, then crawled toward him, his body twitching.
That was when it happened. Kang-soo launched himself like lightning and cracked the man across the face with an open palm. The man in his thirties was a hulking giant, well over six feet — but Kang-soo's lightning-fast slap sent his body sprawling backward onto the floor.
Kang-soo did not, in truth, enjoy violence. But he knew perfectly well that if he wanted to live comfortably in a jungle like prison, he would have to become a beast himself. Step on them halfway. Beat them halfway. And they climb back up. You had to half-kill them — beat them until they couldn't even meet your eyes. Kang-soo knew that well.
"When I call you, you come fast, you fucking piece of shit. The hell are you doing, taking your sweet time crawling over here. You trying to die?"
Kang-soo started stomping the man in his thirties all over again — the man who had been dropped to the floor by that truly lightning-fast slap. The inmates could scarcely believe their own eyes. This was a brand of merciless violence they did not often see.
"Come here."
Beaten like a dog, the man in his thirties crawled like lightning this time, one side of his face swollen a deep, angry red, and dropped to his knees in front of Kang-soo.
"How old are you?"
"Th-thirty-seven."
"I'm forty-seven. So why the fuck were you talking down to me?"
"I've... I've committed a sin worthy of death."
"I'm going to keep my head down and get out of here. Don't touch me. And your organization boys in this prison are probably going to come running for revenge. Give them a heads-up. Ask the guards how I killed a man to get in here. Tell anyone who wants to die to go ahead and try me. And like I said before — anyone grinding toothbrushes. Anyone holding onto shards of glass. Anyone sneaking metal scraps from work detail, filing them down, and hiding them. If I catch you... you'll be a cripple. Pass that along. I've dealt with pieces of shit locked up in the joint until I was sick of it."
"You the one who beat our Dong-sik?"
Two middle-aged hulks, their entire bodies covered in tattoos, blocked Kang-soo's path. They looked like they had been waiting for him on the route back from the exercise yard.
"Who's Dong-sik?"
"You arrogant little shit. You come in here for killing a man and now you think you're untouchable?"
The shorter of the two men in front glanced around as he spoke. In fact, it was as if they had planned it. There was nobody around — a stretch of corridor with no CCTV. Kang-soo scanned for guards. There were none. These bastards might have bought the officers off.
The man in front dropped into a boxing stance and charged at Kang-soo. The instant the punch came flying, Kang-soo surged forward, seized the man's arm, and drove his front foot into the man's groin. Then he twisted the arm.
The fundamental techniques of Hapkido were built on this: locking joints to subdue an opponent. He twisted the man's wrist and bent it to the exact point just short of breaking the bone — and in the same motion, hammered a fist into the man's side. On the outside, he would have held back. In prison, there was no need. No CCTV. No evidence. Whether the bastard's kidney ruptured or not was none of his concern.
The man who had taken the blow to the side made a choking sound, collapsed to the floor, and could not get up, his face contorted in agony.
"You... you son of a bitch..."
The one behind him cursed and pulled something from his pocket. It was a sharpened toothbrush — the kind of weapon that had been a headache even in military prisons. A plastic toothbrush filed down until the tip was as sharp as a blade.
Kang-soo moved first, launching himself and driving fists into the man's chest and side. The middle-aged man kept slashing with the sharpened toothbrush, but Kang-soo caught that arm and twisted it without mercy. He tried not to damage the bone if he could help it. Stretching a tendon, though — that was fine. The filed-down toothbrush clattered to the floor, and the man clutched his wrenched arm, making a sound like an animal.
There was no need to pull his punches in a fight like this anymore. If the guards were going to look the other way, he needed to beat them even more savagely. He just had to hold back from attacks that would fully snap a bone, or tear flesh until the blood ran thick, or split a nose open.
The man with the wrenched arm and the smashed ribs doubled over. Kang-soo drove an elbow into his back, then, once the man was on the floor, started kicking his thighs — over and over, without stopping. Two men, face-down. Kang-soo was beating both middle-aged men with the genuine intention of half-killing them.
This was not what he had spent a lifetime honing his martial art for. It kept twisting into something ugly, something it was never meant to be.
Only after he had beaten them until they truly could not lift their heads did Kang-soo walk back to his cell.
"Number 4821."
"Yes, Hyung-nim..."
"Who the hell is your Hyung-nim. But is your name Dong-sik?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Aigoo... you pathetic bastard..."
Kang-soo let out a laugh before he even realized it. Then he opened his mouth again.