Still Smiling (3)

Seoul Southern Detention Center.

It was about the hour when the whole place was drifting off to sleep. Yoo Hosoon spread his bedding and knelt. He pressed his palms together and offered up a prayer to God, shaped to look as desperate as a prayer could look.

"Father. Forgive me every wrong I have done."

There was no sincerity in it anywhere. It existed only to set his own mind at ease, and the empty urgency went on. He squeezed his eyes shut—for a pardon from sins that could never be washed clean, and for the heaven above that he meant to face when his time came.

I'll trample every one of you suffering down in the pit, and look down on you once more. Up there I'll forget it all and be born again as a new soul.

That was when it happened.

Light unfolded out of Yoo Hosoon's clenched eyes. Above a spread of whitening cloud, something like a hymn came drifting in from far away—a chorus so vast and beautiful that goosebumps rose the instant he heard it. He laced his fingers tighter and muttered.

"Has my prayer reached Him? The Holy Spirit has descended! My prayer—my righteous faith—was not wrong! The Lord has not abandoned this pitiful child after all—!!"

Yoo Hosoon knelt upon the clouds with his hands clasped, ready to receive the Holy Spirit, his Father, who would descend at any moment.

A figure came slowly out from between the clouds. Robes of pure white, long hair, a benevolent smile. It was the very image of Him that Yoo Hosoon had only ever seen in paintings. His heart gave a heavy thud. Tears welled, and nearly spilled.

"Lord...... Have You heard the prayer of this little lamb?"

He bowed his head and pressed his forehead to the ground. As if everything had been forgiven, he forced out counterfeit tears.

In that instant, the figure's lips slowly parted.

The voice was warm at first. Low, like a chapel bell at dawn. A shudder ran the length of Yoo Hosoon's body, and he knelt deeper still.

"Lord...... You remember me. A sinner such as I......"

Sobbing, he pressed his forehead to the earth. The whole world blazed white, and the hymn swelled louder. It was truly like a blessing.

Little by little, the choir's harmony split in a way that was subtly wrong. At first it seemed only two or three voices had slipped off pitch. Soon it warped, as if dozens of people were screaming all at once. The melody broke. The harmony tore. The air went cold.

The voice of the one he had taken for the Lord turned inside out—two voices, grotesquely divided. One was still warm. The other was a monstrous scrape, metal on metal. Gasping, he lifted his head.

The pure-white hem was soaking up black stains. The light that had bathed the clouds seeped red, like blood.

"Ah...... Father......?"

He called out, shivering, and the figure widened its smile. The pupils bled black, and within them countless faces wailed. Then an unfamiliar prayer spilled from its mouth.

Each time the prayer was recited, the clouds dyed themselves red. The landscape of heaven split open, and the floor became a cliff. Below lay an endless river of blood. Screams and weeping went with it, and shattered bones.

"Wh-what is this?"

He lurched upright in shock, and dozens—hundreds—of hands surged up out of the deep. Blood-soaked hands seized Yoo Hosoon by the ankles.

"Lord! It isn't me! I repented! I have to be forgiven!"

The unknown figure only smiled wider, and whispered like a wasp.

Yoo Hosoon froze.

Hundreds of hands lifted a cross. Then they seized him and drove nails through his hands and his feet.

Bang—! Bang—! Bang—!

A scream tore out of his throat. He fought wildly, but he could not overcome hundreds of hands.

"S-stop—!!"

Left hand. Right hand. Left foot and right foot. Great spikes were driven into all of them, and the river of blood grew darker still.

"Haa. Haa."

With the nails through his limbs he was dragging in rough breaths, trying to steady himself, when they pulled the nails back out.

"Aaaagh—!! What are you doing!! You crazy bastards!!"

Huge holes gaped where the nails had been. New flesh sprouted into them at once.

"Wh-what is this?"

Bang—! Bang—! Bang—!

The nails drove in again, without fail.

"Aaaagh—!!"

The horrific pain took him once more. Drive them in, pull them out, scream. Only after the nailing and the pulling had repeated themselves thousands of times did his eyes finally open.

It was his cell. He was in the same posture as before, hands neatly clasped in prayer.

What was that? Did I dream it?

The memory was horrific, but he tried to let it pass as nothing. Yoo Hosoon's faith was rotten enough that he often fell asleep in the middle of a prayer. When he moved to lie down, his body was rigid as stone.

What?

He couldn't move at all. Not even to lift an arm. The cell was strangely loud—traditional instruments, sounds he felt he had heard somewhere before. The beat of an hourglass drum. The metallic clash of a small gong.

He flicked a glance sideways on instinct. A woman was there.

She wore a five-colored hanbok, and she was stomping in place as if a spirit had come down into her in the middle of a shamanic rite. Her hair had fallen and hidden half her face. Her eyes had rolled back, and only the whites blazed. Her lips gaped as if they had been split all the way to her ears—a shape that might have been laughing, or weeping. He couldn't tell which.

He wanted to make a sound, but his throat was stopped like stone. Arms and legs alike would not budge, as if they had been nailed to the floor.

A guard passing beyond the bars glanced in.

"......Devout, this one. I'll give him that."

As if he saw nothing at all, he walked on, unconcerned.

That stupid bastard......

His heart thrashed hard enough to tear through his throat and burst out.

The woman scraped the floor with her toes and came closer, slowly. The hem of the hanbok dragged. The sound was desolate, like soil collapsing inside an old grave. Her face arrived directly in front of his.

Then a cold hand touched his neck. It was like having a block of ice forced into him—a cold that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠froze him down to the veins. At once his throat was crushed, pressure strong enough to pop his eyes from his skull. His breath went ragged, on the verge of snapping, and in his ears his pulse hammered.

Yoo Hosoon tried, desperately, to thrash. He ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was no different from a corpse that could not move. As his consciousness dimmed, an old superstition flickered through one corner of his mind. Even with his tongue knotting on itself, he barely forced the words out.

"O-Our Father...... who art...... in h-heaven......"

In that instant, the woman stopped dead.

The strength went out of her grip. As if the prayer had gotten through, she slowly turned her back, then shuddered her shoulders with a puppet's wrongness. He forced his eyes to roll and followed her.

Slowly, she bent her body backward. She stood on her hands. Blood-soaked hair touched the floor, and upside down—her neck broken at a wrong angle—she stared at Yoo Hosoon and began to recite in an inverted voice.

From morning on, Seoul Southern Detention Center was in an uproar.

The noise was coming from the solitary block on the third floor. Guards came pounding down the corridor in a rush, and when they reached the door a sound was blasting from inside as if something had gone berserk. A hymn. Too loud. Too fast. One look was enough to see that he was out of his mind.

He roared until his throat tore. His face was twisted past recognition, his eyes swollen full of blood. Spraying spit flecked as if with blood, he beat the wall and sang.

The guards hammered on the bars.

"Quiet down! What do you think you're doing!"

He did not stop.

It was not praise. It was the drumbeat of a shamanic rite steeped in madness, and before long it was echoing as a howl.

The moment a guard frantically turned the key, Yoo Hosoon spun and drove his whole body into the wall.

Thud!

Blood burst.

"Break my head! Grind my bones!"

He slammed his forehead into the wall again and again. Blood and scraps of flesh spread across it.

"What are you standing there for, you bastards?! Grab him, now!!"

The guards threw the bars open and rushed in, grabbing for his arms. His eyes had already rolled back. Only the whites showed. Yoo Hosoon bent his body one last time, threw his head back toward the ceiling, and screamed until his throat tore.

In that instant, blood poured from his mouth. A grotesquely bent neck. Eyes fixed on the ceiling. The cell filled with the stench of blood and a trembling echo, like an empty funeral hall.

A week passed.

Bold subtitles rose across the news screen.

I folded my arms and stared straight through the screen. A thin breath slipped out of me, and I couldn't have said whether it was a laugh or rage.

I turned the television off and looked at the ceiling.

As expected, the information from With Crime had been worth having. Starting with Yoo Hosoon, I had taken what With Crime gave me and laid curses on a long list of death-row inmates whose sentences had never been carried out, and on men serving life. They were dying even now. They would not stop dying.

Thanks to With ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Crime, an ending this happy had been possible. Even so, I still couldn't trust it completely. The reach of their information, though—that much was an enormous help, and it troubled me.

For the first time in a while, I got ready to go out. I'd spent the whole day doing nothing but looking into who to take down next, and the kitchen was bare.

"All of this is just so we can eat well and live well."

I was passing the alley in front of my place when I saw them. In a corner, a pack of high schoolers in uniform were glaring murder and hawking spit onto the ground. Between the collars and the cuffs, irezumi showed. Bean-sized nothings, and they were raising every kind of hell.

Then those up-and-coming little sacks of trash started swinging at one another.

What the hell is wrong with these lunatics?

I stood well back and watched. Something was off. The movements were too big to call it a simple spat. It didn't take long before they burst into huge, face-splitting grins at one another—the same ones who had been fighting a moment ago.

Are they actually insane?

Strange. However I looked at it, they were not in their right minds. A little later they staggered off, and I went to the spot where they had spent all that time fighting, laughing, and raving.

"Don't tell me these bastards..."

A syringe was lying there.