The Air Changes
I'd been a little worried, but I made it back to my shantytown without any trouble. The encounter with the Blue Snake Gang had been so visceral that I'd been putting off the trip; normally it was just a poor neighborhood that reeked of squalor, nothing more. In fact, I'd lived in the shantytown for nearly two months without a single incident.
"Been a while."
My shanty, after so long away. It wasn't some beloved den where I could kick on a computer the moment I walked through the door, so I opened it without ceremony. When I pulled, half the door came apart in my hand—someone had forced it open. The single window stood ajar, letting the outside air drift in.
Who trashes a door that didn't even have a lock on it?
"Cleaned out."
Inside, the space that had at least carried some trace of human habitation had been stripped bare—not a thing left to scavenge. I hadn't kept anything valuable there, but whoever had gone through the place had wrung it dry to the last drop, like squeezing water from a towel that was already bone-dry.
"Seriously. They even took the straw."
The pile of straw I'd been using as a bed. Gone. Every last stalk. I hadn't swept in ages, but this was taking "clean house" to a whole new level.
"It was around here somewhere."
I grabbed a stray branch from outside and started digging at the spot where I'd buried my brush and ink. Surely they hadn't found this. Sure enough, the brush and ink were still there, wrapped in weed-paper and tucked beneath the dirt. I brushed the soil off the wrapping and tucked them into my breast.
Good thing I came. Even if I bought proper tools later to write my book, I could practice with these in the meantime. They'd definitely come in handy.
Now I just needed to grab my things and get out—
Just then, the door slammed open behind me with a bang.
"Well, well! Look who it is! If it isn't our little money bag! Back in Chilgok County not five minutes and here you are! Been a while!"
Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Why are these bastards here?
I turned to find the Blue Snake Gang members who'd jumped me on that rainy day standing in the doorway.
"Told you. I said the bastard lives here."
"They told me he was gone. Well, he's not!"
Listening to them talk behind me, this was no chance encounter. They'd come looking for me, plain and simple.
"Good to see you again."
Was there a way out? The entrance was blocked. Even if I landed a steamed-bun punch on the one in front and a barbarian roundhouse on another, the remaining two would take me down.
"I can hear the gears turning in this bastard's head. Come along quietly and you won't get hurt. Just follow us."
The Blue Snake thugs beckoned with an arrogant curl of their fingers. No matter how I turned it over, there was no way out. Not now. For the moment, I fell in step behind them.
The things you least want to run into always find you at the worst possible moment. Like sneaking out of evening study hall only to run straight into the teacher famous for ironclad security. Or going all-in with an early rush in a game, only to get scouted and watch the whole match fall apart. Or feeling your stomach rumble at the exact moment you're cutting it close to being late.
But why now? Why did it have to be now?
When I followed the thugs to where the rest of the gang had gathered, the other members started greeting me like an old friend.
"Well, I'll be! Look who it is! Still running your little business, I see!"
"Hey, bastard. Heard business has been good lately. Making solid money, they say."
"Really? Our young barbarian friend's been working hard, has he?"
If you closed your eyes and just listened, you'd think these were regulars of thirty years encouraging a second-generation shop owner taking over the family business.
"Blue Snake gentlemen, it's been a while. I trust everything's been well?"
I spoke to them the way a young shopkeeper endures the entitled customer who orders nothing but a bowl of plain rice—no liquor, no profit—then lectures him about life for over half an hour.
Son of a bitch. Where the hell had these dogs crawled out from? The one thing I'd been most curious about all this time was news of these bastards. The Blue Snake Gang, vanished into thin air one day.
"Nothing much? Oh, there was something."
A martial artist with the face of a punk who couldn't throw a decent punch but had blabbered his way into the delinquent crowd came forward.
"Oh? Something happened?"
"Our boss, you see. Lost his mother."
The thug tilted his head toward the boss, who was striking a solemn pose with his shoulders squared and heavy. The Blue Snake leader paid our stares no mind. He was watching his men extort a group of innocent people across the way.
"Take that money and my family starves this month!"
"Shut it!"
"It's for my wife's medicine! Please, don't take it!"
"Live how you want, die when you want! Cough it all up!"
"Please—I'm a street peddler living hand to mouth! Where would I keep money!"
"Don't have it? Then you'll pay with that body! Boys!"
"Yes, sir! We'll handle it."
One-sided violence and extortion, playing out in real time. The people dragged here before me were surrounded by Blue Snake thugs, their money and belongings being stripped away.
Filthy bastards. If you're going to be criminals, at least act like it—take over a gambling den or a tavern and collect protection money from people who can actually pay. What did they think people living in a shantytown had?
Why had their numbers swollen like this? There used to be a dozen or so. Now there were easily over thirty. Did they pick up a hostile merger with another gang on the way back from the funeral?
"You see how it is, right? The boss's mother's funeral cost us a lot of money. So you're going to head over there too and pay your res—"
"No! How could I—living here in Chilgok County, earning my bread from this very soil—not have heard of the Blue Snake leader's mother's passing! This Kang Ho is so! So! ashamed of himself!"
I struck first, beating my chest and putting on an act of genuine, wrenching remorse. They were about to tell me to walk over there, get beaten, and cough up money like the others. That wasn't happening.
"Uh, yeah."
The thug seemed thrown off by my heartfelt display.
"If I'd only known, I'd have gone with you to help. It truly grieves me. Please—would you grant me the honor of offering a condolence payment?"
I deliberately stepped closer to the thug, wearing the expression of a man desperate to give his money away.
"Uh, yeah, sure!"
"I'll give you everything I have on me!"
Not that my pocket held anything beyond today's earnings and a small emergency stash. The thuggish martial artist snatched my pouch and checked its contents.
"Ha! Well, look at this bastard. Seems someone's really making a name for himself in Chilgok County these days."
Spotting the few silver coins I'd set aside as emergency funds, the thug broke into the grin of a crab-patty burger magnate gone mad for money.
"Haha! It's all thanks to the Blue Snake gentlemen protecting Chilgok County while I've been working, isn't it!"
"You bastard! You get it, don't you? Maybe you won't need a beating after all."
Whether he was weak to flattery or just dumb, the man snickered and nodded along.
You idiot. I was saying I made good money because you bastards weren't around.
"Your boss seems busy, so please pass along my condolences and tribute on my behalf. I'll be going now!"
"Hold it! You. You're living with us from today, so stay put."
"I'm sorry?"
"See, our organization's grown, and we're desperately short on operating funds. So we're recruiting members with steady income—people like you. From now on, you live with us and hand over eighty percent of your daily earnings. Do that, and we'll let you do business in peace."
These bastards wanted to work me like a begging slave. Absolutely unbelievable.
"I'm sorry. I'll have to decline."
I turned on my heel, tensed my legs, and made to bolt.
CRACK!
A sound like a drum bursting erupted from my skull.
"Huh?"
My legs gave out. The instant my knees hit the ground, my face kissed the dirt. My cheek scraped raw across the ground. Soil filled my mouth.
Blood?
Blood trickled from the back of my head down along my cheek. The pain arrived a beat behind the sound—a dull, crushing weight swallowing the back of my skull. At the edge of my fallen field of vision, I could see a club in a Blue Snake thug's hand.
Oh. I got hit. With a club. In the head.
"Fuck. We try to be civil with a barbarian bastard and he thinks it's a negotiation. Hey. You think the Blue Snake Gang is a joke?"
The thug's incredulous voice came from behind me.
"Looks like this barbarian bastard wants to keep getting beaten until he learns his place!"
"Kgh!"
Someone drove a full-force kick into my side as I lay on the ground. It was a liver shot so clean a retired hard-punching boxer would have tipped his hat—even drunk.
"Ugh!"
The pain from my liver surged up through my stomach and into my throat, threatening to bring back everything I'd eaten. But this was only the beginning.
"When a barbarian bastard crawls into Chilgok County and shakes down decent folk, he's got to pay taxes, doesn't he!"
"Why doesn't the bastard we already beat remember his place?"
"Hey! Wreck him!"
One-sided violence, dragging up memories of that rainy day. My body wouldn't respond, but I curled into a ball anyway—if only to stay alive.
It hurt.
"ENOUGH!!!"
Just as the pain threatened to scatter my consciousness entirely, the Blue Snake leader called off his men.
"Hah... hah... Something displease you, boss?"
The thug was winded from the beating. He caught his breath and addressed the leader.
"Too damaged means he can't earn. Stop hitting him. Cripple his legs and be done with it."
The leader pointed at the blade strapped to the thug's waist.
"Ah! You mean cut the tendons in the back of his legs so he can't run, and use him for performances—is that it?"
"Quick on the uptake."
"You got it!"
"No. No, no."
Anything but my legs. Through the fog in my brain, gasping for breath, I scrambled desperately away from the thug.
"There, there! It's all right. It's all right. We're not going to kill you. We're good criminals, see? Just going to cut the tendons in your legs. And when you wake up, you'll work hard for us from now on. Understand?"
The thug grabbed my hind leg and dragged me toward him.
No. I can't be crippled. Please.
The thug drew his blade. I thought it was over. Then, without warning, the air itself changed.
A chill like a venomous serpent coiled and aiming for the nape of my neck. A killing intent so suffocating it made me forget the pain in my body entirely.
"Wha—what the—what the hell is that?"
The thuggish martial artist, blade poised over my leg, whipped his head toward something off to one side.
"You lot."
A low voice that blanketed the entire shantytown. At the sound of it—like a serpent fixing its gaze on its prey's throat—every last Blue Snake member turned toward the same direction. I too turned my head, barely, toward the source of that voice and its killing intent.
"What do you think you're doing?"
There she stood, wearing an expression I had never once seen on her face before. Cheonsalseong.