So She Could Be Happy
…I hope she's happy.
Ah…
His whole body felt like it had been shattered. The knives had all been knocked from his hands; his arms and legs refused to obey. Blood ran freely from his mouth.
And yet Park Do-hyun was still smiling.
"…Hell of a strong bastard, ain't ya."
He coughed up a mouthful of blood and slumped against the wall.
"Where the hell's a monster like you been hidin' all this time, crawlin' out now?"
Han Daewong looked down at him. Not a single drop of blood marked the gash across his side, and those eyes still weren't a man's.
But the words that came out of his mouth were, unexpectedly, human.
"…You gonna move, or not."
Park Do-hyun snorted a laugh. Move? He didn't even have the strength to stand.
"…Do whatever you want. Ain't got the power to stop you anyway."
Han Daewong stared down at him a moment longer, then turned toward the arena.
That massive back began to recede into the dark.
"…Hey. Han Daewong."
Park Do-hyun called after him.
"Before you walk into hell, let me ask you one thing."
Daewong's feet stopped.
"Kang Seo-yeon. You ain't even known that kid long. A few days? A few weeks, few months at most?"
Blood-smeared lips twisted into a grin.
"But you're walkin' straight into a place where you're gonna die, all for her? Why the hell… what makes you go that far?"
Daewong kept his back turned and was silent a while. Then he spoke, slow and quiet.
"…Ever since I came here, I've been a monster. That's how everyone saw me. A beast, or something that made money. …And they weren't wrong."
Park Do-hyun didn't fully grasp the weight of those words, but he listened without interrupting.
"But she didn't."
Daewong stopped there.
He didn't explain further. Didn't mention that she had given him a name, that they had shared meals, that for the first time in this world someone had looked at him and seen a person.
He simply said it short.
"Because of her, I got to live as a human."
As if that alone was enough.
"But she was living like a beast. Getting beaten. Chained to a debt that never ends."
His voice dropped a tone lower.
"…That ain't right."
No rage. No solemn resolve. No raised voice. Just the quiet certainty of a man stating something obvious.
Which made it heavier still.
"So I'm going. So that she can smile, even once, without anything weighing on her."
—That was all.
With those words left hanging, that enormous back walked into the darkness.
Park Do-hyun stared blankly after him.
I hope Seo-yeon can be happy.
That single sentence stabbed somewhere deep in his chest. Deeper than any knife.
…Me too.
He rested his head against the wall and let out a long breath.
…I wanted that too.
For that little kid to be happy. That one wish alone was why Park Do-hyun had stayed on this filthy floor.
A piece of trash like him had no right to stand beside her. All he could do was prop her up from a distance so she wouldn't collapse. That was everything.
But that bear…
That bear was walking off to do the one thing Park Do-hyun had never been worthy enough to try, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Park Do-hyun had just traded blows with that beast.
Knives didn't work. Sand didn't work. Nothing worked. A pure, undiluted monster that answered to none of a human's rules.
If that thing had wanted to, it could have crushed his skull ages ago.
But it hadn't.
It had thrown him aside and left his life intact. It could have killed him. It chose not to.
And when it spoke Seo-yeon's name…
For a moment, something human had returned to the beast's eyes.
The same creature that didn't flinch when blades carved it open, that didn't blink when sand was flung in its face—
—only when it said I hope Seo-yeon can be happy did it wear a human face instead of a beast's.
…Yeah.
Park Do-hyun slowly nodded.
What kept that monster tethered to being human was Seo-yeon.
That tiny girl was holding the reins of that massive beast—without even knowing it.
…Ain't even funny.
He huffed a dry laugh.
That small hand he had wanted to protect so desperately decades ago had become the rope that bound a monster into a man.
He had spent a lifetime watching from afar. Never close enough, never worthy enough—just hiding in the shadows and praying she wouldn't break.
And that bear… was standing right beside her, walking into a hundred men for her sake.
Should he call it envy? Or relief?
…Relief.
Yeah. He could call it that now.
If it was a bastard this stubborn, this single-minded about her happiness alone—if it was a bastard that became human only in front of her—
Then maybe he could leave it to him.
The thing he himself had never managed to do.
"…Heh. Heheheh."
A blood-flecked laugh slipped out.
Then Park Do-hyun braced a hand on the wall and forced himself upright. His broken arm screamed. His legs shook. But his eyes were sharp again.
"…Yeah. Then I gotta go too."
He picked up a fallen knife with his good hand.
A hundred men waited inside. The ones Park Sang-do had dragged in. Sashimi knives, axes, every kind of ugly weapon. And right in the middle of them was Seo-yeon.
Until that bear reached her—
He would clear the road.
Maybe… that was the first thing the mad dog who had only ever watched from the shadows for decades could finally do for her.
"Wait for me, Seo-yeon."
Park Do-hyun muttered into the dark.
"…This useless uncle of yours is gonna bark one last time for ya."
Stumbling footsteps vanished into the darkness.
The lights over the ring and the seats were all dead. The moment I stepped into that empty dark—
KUUUNG—!!
A thunderous crash roared behind me.
I looked back. The shutter that had been raised at the entrance had slammed all the way to the floor. From the emergency exits came the heavy clank of locks engaging.
We were sealed in.
And in that same instant, every light in the place blazed on at once.
Under the flood of light, people stood waiting.
One, two, three… counting was pointless. Men packed the arena from wall to wall. Easily over a hundred. Every one of them gripped a weapon. Sashimi knives, steel pipes, axes. Blades flashed under the lights.
In the center stood Seo Jin-woo. And beside him, another man.
A middle-aged guy with a rough, hard-edged face.
I knew that face.
I could never forget it.
It had been raining.
The moment I flipped the car and raised my arm to smash the last one—the face that had crawled out through shattered glass and looked up at me.
Park Sang-do.
The bastard who had dragged me down off the mountain and sold me.
The bastard who had kept Seo-yeon chained to this place for decades.
The name I had burned into my skull, the face from that day, stood right there in front of me.
"That the one?"
Park Sang-do asked Seo Jin-woo.
"Yeah. That's him."
Seo Jin-woo shrugged.
"Sang-do, I told you, right? Like a damn bear. That bastard put me through absolute hell."
He didn't know.
He had no idea that the bear he had captured on the mountain was standing in front of him now in a human body.
That the thing looking down at him through the rain that day had been me.
But right now, there was something I needed to confirm first.
"…Seo-yeon."
I opened my mouth.
"Where's Seo-yeon."
She was nowhere in the arena.
Seo Jin-woo looked at me, then slowly curled the corner of his mouth.
"Ahh~ Seo-yeon?"
He tilted his head in exaggerated innocence.
"Sorry about that. I just killed her."
In that instant, the air inside the arena stopped.
"You were causing such a ruckus, see. Figured we needed an example. So… well, I took care of her first. She couldn't pay the debt anyway. Just noise."
It was a lie.
I knew it by instinct. A man like Seo Jin-woo didn't throw away merchandise that made money. Seo-yeon was a product with a thirteen-win streak. He wouldn't kill her. He had her locked up somewhere and was lying to rattle me.
My head knew that.
But Seo-yeon wasn't here.
She wasn't in front of my eyes. I couldn't see for myself whether the claim that she was dead was false.
And if—
If those words were true.
…No.
Even as I told myself it wasn't. Even knowing it was a lie.
The word killed scraped something deep in the back of my skull.
In the furthest corner of a mountain den, something that had been sleeping all this time slowly opened its eyes at that single word.
"Man, look at that face."
Park Sang-do cut in with a sneer.
"Jin-woo, you were right. Raised yourself one hell of a bear. But a bear's still a bear. No matter how big it gets, in front of a hundred hunters it's just hide and meat."
He raised a hand.
"Boys. Time to put it down."
A hundred men tightened their grips on their weapons.
But I could barely hear the sound.
Killed her.
Seo-yeon.
As an example.
The words echoed through my head. Even knowing they were lies. That word scraped deeper than Park Do-hyun's knives ever had.
Until now, I had tried to be human.
Every time the bear's instincts boiled up, I forced them down. When I hit people, I didn't kill them. Even when I was angry, I held the line. Because that was what a person did. Because the human world had rules, and morals, and things you simply did not do.
But my body had already stopped being human.
Something that transcended humanity… something that was, for all practical purposes, a bear.
A beast's body that could fold a vending machine and launch a man with a single blow. The human mind had been clinging to that body by sheer force of will. Held by one thin thread: I am a person.
And that thread, right now—
Snap.
I heard it break.
…Ah.
It was strange.
My head didn't heat up. It emptied out instead. Everything complicated vanished. The things a person was supposed to protect, the things you were supposed to endure, the things you were supposed to fear—all of it simply fell away.
Everything that had been crushing me became light in an instant.
I was free.
Terrifyingly free.
What remained in that space was a single, very simple impulse.
Tear apart every last one of the things that had touched what was mine.
That was all. That was enough.
I blinked.
A bear's forepaw.
I blinked again.
…This time, it did not come back as a human hand.
Inside me, the man named Han Daewong slowly sank.
The memories of being an office worker, the longing to be like Dominic, the evening of grilling meat with Seo-yeon—everything submerged far below.
And from the deepest place, something else rose to take its place.
The thing that had ruled the mountain.
"…Grh."
A sound that was not human leaked from my throat.
For the first time, Seo Jin-woo's easy expression hardened.
"…Huh?"
"Grhh…"
My body felt like it was swelling. I didn't know if it actually grew. But stranger still was how the hundred men filling the arena suddenly looked small. Those hands gripping weapons looked ridiculous.
They were just… prey.
GROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!
A bear's roar shook the underground.
The entire cramped space trembled. Dust rained from the ceiling. A hundred men flinched back as one. The hands holding weapons shook—visibly.
Instinct.
Just as any animal that meets a bear in the mountains already knows, the human animal also knows, in its body first, when it stands before a true predator. That it must run.
But there was nowhere to run.
The shutters were down. The emergency exits were locked.
They were the ones who had sealed us in.
And they were also the ones who were trapped.
In this narrow underground space—with a bear.
"…Hey. Hey. Is that even a person?"
"Don't freeze up, you little shit! There's a hundred of us! One of him!"
"Shut up and surround it! If we all rush at once, what the hell can a single—"
Someone blustered. The voice was loud, but the end of it shook.
On the surface they tightened their grips and shouted big. But every body among them had already taken a half-step backward.
They knew. Not with their heads—with their bodies.
That what they had surrounded was not prey…
…Ah. At some point my head had gone blank as a sheet of white paper.
Seo-yeon, Park Sang-do, revenge, the debt. All the complicated human things were gone. What remained was a single sensation.
I was hungry.
And the world in front of me was full of prey.
One, two, three… more than I could count. Every direction was prey. I had never seen this many at once. And they had even been kind enough to lock themselves in so they couldn't escape.
Good.
Today was a day for gorging.
It felt so good I almost wanted to laugh.
A bear's face doesn't know how to smile, but something close to it boiled up from the bottom of my chest.
All of them.
Without missing a single one.
I would devour them.
Before I knew it, claws had punched through my shoes and scraped the floor; concrete peeled like paper. Power flooded my legs. Not the kind of strength human muscle could produce.
"Hic—hiiiiih—!"
The nearest piece of prey stood frozen with a sashimi knife in its hand.
I drove my feet into the ground and launched myself at those terrified eyes.
In the instant I charged the prey, the last tiny scrap of the human still left inside me screamed, faint and far away.
────!!!
But that sound was buried beneath the roar of the bear, and no one heard it.