Second Coming (3)
The darkness of the lobby, packed shoulder to shoulder with the ever-growing crowd, trembled in the flicker of candles set out here and there.
Doom-doom-doom-doom-doom—
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
Even despair and terror that had once seared themselves into memory grow familiar in the end.
Every human being is born with exactly that kind of temperament.
Despite the roar pounding against their eardrums, not a single soul turned to look out the window. Instead, the people drifted toward that man in white as if pulled by a magnet—confessing the anxieties knotted in their chests and receiving answers, pouring out their pain and sorrow and receiving comfort.
By now, such scenes had become the most ordinary thing in the world. A night in Guro-gu, where the weary and the broken once again formed a circle around that man.
He sat with a small child perched on his knee, gazing off to the side with a gentle smile. Kim Jiho, watching the gathering from a spot set apart from them, followed the man's gaze.
There, among the people the man had brought in not long ago, a woman holding a guitar was singing.
“My heart rejoices in the Cult Leader-nim who has come to us~
My eyes have beheld Your salvation~
Save them, that the world may be filled with those who serve the Cult Leader-nim~”
A hymn. Gone were the casual clothes she'd worn when she first arrived here—she stood in white, her rose-tinted lips parting in song. A lovely voice, a beautiful melody, wrapped around lyrics that were, to say the least, rather hard to parse. And yet every soul in that white circle gazed at her with hazy eyes, hands clasped together.
Her trembling, delicate voice slowly faded. The hands strumming the guitar fell still, and she bowed politely to the gathering. Those lingering on the afterglow burst into applause, one and all.
Clap— clap— clap—
The man, too, kept clapping benevolently until the woman had carefully melted back into the crowd.
“Cult Leader-nim! Tell us about the Sanctuary again! Is it really true that the water overflows in abundance there, and that there are lots of friends?”
When the song ended, the little boy on the man's knee asked. Pure longing shone in the boy's sparkling eyes.
“It is indeed. A very peaceful and beautiful place.”
“How do I get to the Sanctuary?”
“A body and heart pure as fresh snow. With that alone, the door will open.”
Ahh—
A soft murmur of wonder rippled through the crowd at the exchange between the boy and the man. Everyone who had listened was picturing the Sanctuary, each weaving in their own hopes.
Kim Jiho stared at Lee Jiwoo, who sat in the very front row gazing at the man with an enraptured expression. The woman who had once screamed that he was a fraud, a fake cult leader, was gone. In her place was only a zealous believer who followed him more faithfully than anyone.
And yet Kim Jiho could not bring himself to judge her. These days, he no longer had the certainty to condemn that man as a mere charlatan either.
Was it yesterday? He still remembered Lee Jiwoo approaching him, the one who still kept his distance from them all. Clad in her pure-white believer's robe, she had spoken to him for the first time in ages.
‘Jiho-ssi. Do you still have your doubts?’
‘…….’
At his silence, Lee Jiwoo's face scrunched up just as it had on that first day. Kim Jiho remembered that expression—the one she'd worn when she'd driven him out for arriving late.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Jiho-ssi. You do realize that if it weren't for the Grace the Cult Leader-nim gave you, you'd have starved to death on the spot, right?’
She was snapping at him with a face no different from day one. Kim Jiho had always assumed that the people who fell for cults were the ones with something a little… loose upstairs. But—
‘The Cult Leader-nim told me to leave you be, but I have to say it. Even family needs some give-and-take. Make your choice soon, Kim Jiho-ssi.’
How could that vivid, lively face possibly belong to someone who had lost her mind?
‘Are you going to be family? Or an outsider?’
Leaving that final warning with the dazed man, she returned to her 'family.'
‘Sister Jiwoo, why do you approach the unbelievers?’
‘Well, he is a face I've known since the first day, so my heart feels a bit heavy, that's all.’
‘Ahh— so that is the familial love the Cult Leader-nim spoke of. I have been foolish, Sister.’
Hahahaha—
“Hey, Jiho. You done with that goddamn guitar playing yet?”
A gravelly voice jolted Kim Jiho out of his recollection. He swallowed the scowl that rose naturally to his face.
A middle-aged man plopped down beside him without so much as a response. Park Yeongho. In every possible way, he stood at the opposite pole from that man in white.
“Fuck, I'm gonna have to take a shit farther out starting tomorrow. The stink's so bad I can't even finish wiping without gagging, I swear to god.”
Kim Jiho looked blankly at the hand Park Yeongho slung familiarly around his shoulder. This man always pulled this fake-friendly act on him. Probably because Kim Jiho hadn't joined that white circle.
“Hyung-nim, got any toilet paper left?”
“None, you little bastard. Grab extra tomorrow when that cult freak hands it out.”
“Ah, but I really gotta go right now—”
People gathered around Park Yeongho as he grumbled. Mostly young, able-bodied men. For the most part, they resented the way that man in white reigned as their leader.
The lobby, which had rung only with the man in white's voice, grew noisy with the buzz of Park Yeongho's crew. And in no time, Lee Jiwoo was glaring daggers at them, eyes sharp with fury.
“Hyung-nim, look at that bitch glaring at us. Ah, that's fucking hot.”
“You punk! How can you say that in front of a man with a daughter?”
“Ah, my bad! Still, hyung-nim, you got toilet paper?”
“You little—hey! So this time it's not a shit, it's something else, huh?”
“Ah, you caught me—”
Hahahahaha—
They deliberately raised their volume even higher, putting on a show for the woman glaring at them. Kim Jiho had no desire to get caught up in the crew's bickering. All he wanted was to learn more about that man in white. Keeping his distance had been a deliberate choice for exactly that reason—but Park Yeongho seemed to read it as rebellion against the man.
At the laughter shaking the lobby, not just Lee Jiwoo but everyone in the white circle turned to glare at Park Yeongho's crew. The white gathering was made up of the elderly, small children, and women.
“Yah, so what if you're looking? What're you gonna do about it?”
A crew of young men sneering right back at them. Kim Jiho fixed his gaze on the object of his observation.
The man in white was watching them all, as always, with a faint smile on his lips.
“Uh, hye, hyung-nim. Maybe we should call it a day for today…”
One of Park Yeongho's crew ventured cautiously under the white man's gaze. They hadn't been this brazen from the start, either. Discontent, leaked out little by little, ever so slowly, had swelled to this size with time.
“Ptui! Fuck, I was gonna settle this today anyway.”
“Hye, hyung-nim. What are you going to do?”
“Look at that. Every last gullible fool gathered right there. Cult leaders are nothing special, I'm telling you. Lock people up in one place, stroke whatever they're missing, gentle-like, and boom—you've got yourself a cult.”
“We all know he's a cult leader. But that man…”
“You punk. That's exactly why I've been poking at him soft so far. That man isn't choosing not to kill us. He can't kill us.”
Kim Jiho had somehow thought the man in white was showing them mercy.
“Guys who run churches, they care like crazy about their moral image. Trust your hyung-nim on this one. I'm the guy who strolled into an actual cult and got my daughter out alive.”
Park Yeongho saw it as a cult leader's limitation.
Full of confidence, Park Yeongho strode toward the man in white. And the cult leader, watching him come, smiled all the brighter. That response—like he'd been waiting for exactly this—raised the hair on Kim Jiho's arms.
“Hey, you there! I've been watching you this whole time, and you eat like us, sleep like us, same as everybody. So how the hell are you a god?”
Park Yeongho demanded brazenly. The man in white crossed the split circle and slowly came to stand before him. Looking down at Park Yeongho, he spoke.
“So in your eyes, I appeared to be a god.”
A quiet voice, yet one that resonated. Park Yeongho flinched slightly, then shook himself off and shouted.
“You're all flowery talk and not a single thing proven! This so-called Sanctuary—does it even actually exist? And those zombie things or whatever—isn't it you who set them up out there to scare us into believing?”
Kim Jiho, who had been watching Park Yeongho's defiance with bored detachment, felt his eyes light up. Unexpectedly, Park Yeongho was firing off, machine-gun style, the very questions Kim Jiho had been desperate to ask. The pen in Kim Jiho's hand, gripping his journal, trembling with heat, angled itself toward the page, his eyes locked on the two men.
“…….”
Park Yeongho's questions dropped a silence over the lobby.
The man patted the shoulders of Park Yeongho, who stood with his chest puffed to its limit, and laughed.
“The peacock has spread its tail wide.”
At that single line, Park Yeongho's whole body flinched visibly.
Then the man in white reached into empty air—the air where he'd been pulling out a water bottle—and drew forth a baseball bat and a flashlight instead. He pressed them into Park Yeongho's hands and murmured softly.
“Do not spend all that admirable courage on me. Use it, instead, to prove my falsehood.”
With a gentle gesture, he pointed out the window. Flashlights floating in the air swung in unison along the line of his finger, illuminating the street outside.
A single zombie, fallen behind the endless horde. The muscle-bound thing that had been flung away earlier was sprinting back, trying to rejoin the pack.
One lone zombie. Park Yeongho felt his odds were good.
“Everybody watch close! The show ends after this! Let's go, boys!”
“Hye, hyung-nim. If you keep this up, they might stop rationing us food…”
“Ah, I told you to just trust me and come out! Jiho, you come too!”
Thrilled out of his mind, Park Yeongho began dragging Kim Jiho along single-handedly. When Kim Jiho looked at the man in white with panicked eyes, the man smiled faintly and gave a small nod.
Ah— whatever. If anything, as Park Yeongho said, this could become a proving ground. If that thing charging toward them really was a zombie—well, didn't that just mean it was a human corpse? A mutilated corpse versus an able-bodied man. A matchup an able-bodied man simply could not lose.
The muscle-bound monster that had been threatening to charge into the middle of their group was gone. If anything, now was the perfect moment.
“Hyung-nim. We came out here without anything.”
“Ah, I told you it's fine. I've got it all planned out. First we smash that cult freak's logic, then we negotiate.”
“……Oh. And how?”
“Right about when the doubters start trying to bolt, we step in and seize the mood ourselves. While doing that, we demand food… you know, the stuff you guys want… you get me?”
“Whoa! Hyung-nim, you're an actual genius!”
“You punk! I told you to trust ME, dammit!”
While they dreamed their rosy future, they arrived at the center of the road. Kim Jiho could see the people from the lobby filing outside under the man's direction, gathering to watch Park Yeongho's crew.
The crew, walking the road with deliberately theatrical swagger, and one zombie, recognized each other. The zombie that spotted Park Yeongho's crew threw its head back toward the sky.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
“…Hyu, hyung-nim. That dead bastard's voice is way too loud.”
“You punk, you've heard it a hundred times—why're you giving commentary? Watch close, you cult freak.”
Park Yeongho spat at the man watching them, then charged straight at the zombie.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
The zombie, too, came hurtling at Park Yeongho, upper body thrashing wildly.
“Die, you bastard!”
The first strike was Park Yeongho's. Swinging the bat wildly to find his timing, he brought it around in a great arc at the zombie closing in.
Thwack—!
With a satisfying crack, the zombie, struck in the right shoulder, tumbled across the pavement.
“Huuuuck, so that's all it's got! Huh?!”
With a relieved breath, Park Yeongho cracked his neck side to side—then furrowed his brow. The zombie that had fallen was rising like a roly-poly toy, charging at him again.
Watching the scene unfold, Kim Jiho found himself shouting without meaning to.
“The head! Aim for the head!”
Park Yeongho spared Kim Jiho the briefest glance, then swung at the zombie again. The bat that had clearly been headed for the skull drifted, with the zombie's violent movement, toward the neck instead.
THWACK—!
This time, the zombie that had been knocked down came lunging the instant it hit the ground, and Park Yeongho's face drained white.
“Kkieeeeek—!”
Kim Jiho could see Park Yeongho's eyes shaking wildly. He couldn't afford to create distance between them to swing properly. The thing got up and charged as good as new even from a blow where Park Yeongho had thrown his whole waist into the swing. Every failed hit shrank the gap between them. One more miss, and the thing would be right on top of him.
“Hye, hyung-nim! Go for the head! The head!”
At his crew's cheering from afar, Park Yeongho's face twisted.
'You fucking— I know! I KNOW, damnit!'
He knew what to aim for. Knowing how to actually land it was a whole different problem.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
The courage that had been welling up in him drained away at the grotesque face drawing nearer and nearer. The cold sweat that had started at his forehead ran swiftly down his cheeks.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
“You, you son of a biiitch!”
Thump—
Park Yeongho found a more certain kind of victory. Surviving meant winning, someday. He hurled the baseball bat at the zombie and broke into a sprint back toward his crew.
“Hye, hyung-nim?”
The crew that had been cheering him on let out a collective, bewildered question. Staring at Park Yeongho charging at them with his teeth clenched, they backed away, step by slow step. Among them, one man staring down at the ground where Park Yeongho was about to plant his foot shouted urgently.
“Yeongho hyung-nim! In front! There's a hole in front of you!”
His body had always been faster than his mouth.
Crack—!
Park Yeongho's foot plunged into a hole in the asphalt, torn open years ago by who-knows-what. His ankle twisted, and he went rolling across the ground.
“Gggaaaaak—!”
“Hyung-nim!”
Faster than the crew rushing to help, the zombie pursuing from behind was faster still. Leaping in a single bound, the zombie landed squarely on Park Yeongho's back and sank its teeth into his neck.
“Gg, gggaaaaak—!”
As though an artery had been torn open, a fountain of blood sprayed across the zombie's face. Park Yeongho thrashed his body this way and that, but the zombie refused to let go, continuing its meal.
“……Huh?”
The men did not understand. Things their common sense could not process were happening all at once. A corpse gnawing a man's neck, and so a fountain of blood. And the man whose neck was being torn out suddenly twisted his own body.
Park Yeongho, wrenching himself at angles that defied comprehension, turned to stare at them with his head bent crooked. And opened his mouth to scream.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
A zombie with another zombie riding its back came sprinting toward them. One of the men, instinctively glancing behind him at the path of escape, stood gaping, mouth agape.
Doom-doom-doom-doom-doom—
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
The horde answered the feeding signal their comrade had sent. With no room even to flee, two zombies descended upon two of the men. And the moment they became four, the zombies lunged at the rest of the men. Only then did their legs give out and they began to back away—but a far worse hell waited behind them.
Kim Jiho instinctively turned and ran back toward the man in white.
“Gggaaaaak!”
“Wh, what is thiiiiis! Let go, let gooooo!”
“Hye, hyung-niiiim! Stay with usss!”
Clutching his journal to his chest, Kim Jiho did his best to shut out the screams clamoring behind him.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
But the things did not let go of their prey.
Clang—!
Behind him, a zombie that had leapt at him crashed into the car in front. Zombies that had hurled themselves against streetlights and signs closed in on him without the slightest impairment. In an instant, every direction around him was occupied by the things.
“Heuk— heuk—”
Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!
The zombie that had slammed into the sign had its left arm bent at an unnatural angle. And that clumsy crooked arm was reaching out toward him as it charged.
The end. A clear and obvious end had arrived for him.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
The thing leapt at him. Behind him, the screams of men and zombies were still tangled together. His grip on the journal loosening, Kim Jiho raised his eyes and looked ahead.
The people in white, watching him with calm, expressionless faces. Past the elderly, the children, past Lee Jiwoo, to the man at the center. The man who met his gaze, as always, with a bright smile mouthed a single word.
'Salvation.'
And gently, he raised his right hand.
“Kkieeeeeeek—!”
The things' vivid roars slammed against his eardrums. He could smell their rancid, blood-sour breath right in front of his nose.
And yet, death did not come.
Slowly, very slowly, Kim Jiho's head swept across his surroundings. And then, soundlessly, shock spilled out of him.
The world had stopped.