Episode 4 - 4 [I'll Set It Off]
The first to see me was a soldier.
A rifle-raised private's eyes swept the crowd and locked onto a single body moving against the tide. Everyone was running away. One person was walking in. Western suit. The shirt was slipping off the left shoulder, and what showed beneath it wasn't a normal arm. Dark red hide and steel wire wound from wrist to shoulder. Not a human arm — something that had been modified into a tool.
"Halt!"
Japanese. I didn't halt.
I walked. Five steps to the dud.
Gun barrels turned toward my chest. Not one. Two. Three. Black holes multiplied at the edges of my vision.
Four steps.
Young-sik's eyes rose from the floor. Blood from his forehead covered one eye. The other looked up at me. The pupil trembled. The hand crushed under the boot was still pointing toward the dud.
Those eyes recognized me.
The monster that had ripped the truck door off with bare hands. The thing that had shown a predator's stare while cutting the ropes. Young-sik's mouth dropped open. Bloody lips parted around a word trying to fall out.
I passed him. Three steps. Two steps.
"Prepare to fire!"
The commanding officer's shout. Bolts cycling — a chain of metallic clicks. Not one at a time. All at once. A steel chorus rang across the platform.
One step.
The dud was at my feet.
A lump of iron a little bigger than my fist. From its top, a faint thread of blue smoke still rose. The fake fuse, burning. Young-sik's blood had reached it, staining the underside.
I bent at the waist.
The left hand descended.
A dead hand. From fingertips to wrist — no feeling. The fingers wouldn't obey. The wire had stopped the blood, and bloodless fingers were no longer mine.
But the muscle fibers were alive.
Tiger blood lit the fire inside the muscle. Not the brain's command — the blood's. An electrical signal forced down the spine woke the dead nerves by force. The fingers moved. Like a seizure. Not by will but by violence.
Five fingers made contact with the dud.
Cold — no. There was no feeling. Cold or hot — impossible to know. Dead fingers carry no temperature. I knew the iron was in my hand not by touch but by sight.
I gripped.
Five fingers folded around the iron. The muscle in the wire-wound forearm swelled. The hide creaked. The wire carved into flesh with a low keen. This wasn't gripping. This was crushing.
I stood up.
Dud in my left hand.
The platform went quiet.
Screaming stopped, gunfire stopped, banzai stopped, even the hiss of the locomotive's steam faded. No — not stopped. My eardrums had blocked it all out. The brain had no bandwidth left for sound processing. Every nerve was converging on the left hand.
Soldier barrels trained on me. More than ten holes, each aimed at a different part of my body.
On the second-floor railing, Kageyama was watching. He had unfolded his arms. The gloved knuckles gripping the railing had gone white. The ease in the finger that had been tapping his nose was gone. His mouth was half open. The hunter's face was peeling away.
His eyes were fixed on my left hand. The hide. The wire. The hand inside it, clenching the dud. The realization that the owner of the grip that had crumpled the truck's steel — seen only in photographs until now — was standing in front of him.
Kageyama's lips moved.
"Code T…"
I couldn't hear it. But I read the shape.
At the edge of the stage, Father was looking at me. No — not at me. Father didn't know his 'idiot son.' His idiot son had no reason to be at Gyeongseong Station. What his eyes saw was an unidentified Korean with something grotesque strapped to his left arm. A lunatic in a Western suit.
'Good. Better he doesn't know yet.'
I squeezed the left hand harder.
The finger joints should have screamed. Should have. No feeling. Pain wasn't getting through. The wire had crushed the nerves too. That was the terrifying part. Whether my bones were breaking right now — I couldn't tell.
I squeezed harder.
The iron surface of the dud began to deform. Metal twisting inside my grip — not felt, heard. Eeeeee. Steel crying. The same sound as tearing the truck door.
"F— fire —"
The commanding officer's voice broke.
Too late.
Inside my left hand, the casing of the dud split open.
The explosive was exposed. Compressed black powder pressed out through gaps in the metal. At the same moment, the last ember of the fake fuse touched the powder.
Contact.
The world went white.
The blast was light before it was sound. The field of vision detonated white. My retinas felt scorched. Then the sound arrived — if it could be called sound. A shockwave that punched through the eardrum and bounced off the inside of the skull. A detonation heard through bone.
My left hand was gone.
Not gone. That was just how it felt without sensation. But the shockwave climbing from the elbow was telling me. Something inside the left hand had shattered completely. Whether it was metal or bone — the distinction had ceased to exist.
Shrapnel flew. The hide caught it. The three layers of cowhide Dr. Jang had wrapped held the bone fragments trying to burst through the flesh. The wire screamed. The steel line, overwhelmed by expanding muscle, snapped one by one. The loose wire ends whipped through the air like flails.
The shockwave swept the platform.
This was not smoke. This was a real explosion. The air within a five-meter radius caught fire. The concrete floor cracked. Flags ignited and flew. The wooden planks of the stage were lifted into the air.
I was standing.
Both feet planted in the concrete. Left arm hanging at my side. The hide was half torn away. Through the gap — what showed could not be called an arm. Red and white, mixed together. It took one second to understand that the white was bone.
Blood fell. Drip. Drip. Blood seeping through the hide made dark stains on the concrete.
'It went off.'
Screaming poured from the platform like a waterfall. The soldiers scattered. The formation collapsed. The web set to catch mice had been blown apart by the storm. On the second-floor railing, Kageyama was shouting. Couldn't make out the words. His eardrums were humming. The sounds of the world were muffled and underwater.
Young-sik was looking up. From the ground, through one bloody eye. His mouth was open. He was staring at the monster that had taken a dud, crushed it with bare hands, and detonated it.
I looked down at Young-sik.
"Get up."
I wasn't sure sound had come out. My eardrums were dead and I couldn't hear my own voice. But my lips moved.
Young-sik's eyes shook. Fear. The same fear as in the truck. But under that fear, something else had been laid down. A face that couldn't understand. Not knowing why this monster was on his side.
"Get up and run."
I turned. Blood was still falling from the left arm. The hide and wire, half unraveled, dangled as I walked, swinging like a pendulum.
Vision was narrowing. Darkening from the edges. Blood leaving the body. Not just the left arm — the blast had shaken everything. From somewhere in the ribcage, something sharp was stabbing the lung. Every breath scraped something inside the chest.
'Countdown.'
Tick. Tick.
Not the left arm's clock. The whole body's clock.
A shot rang out. From behind. A bullet grazed the left ear. Wind sliced past the eardrum. A miss. Even if it had hit, I wouldn't know right now.
I walked. Across the platform. Toward the exit where the crowd was pouring out.
Through the smoke and dust and screaming, I was the only one walking slowly.
Blood left footprints. Drops falling from the left hand, stamped into the concrete. One per step.
The right hand stayed in the pocket. The hand whose back had Yeon-hwa's words written on it. Thank you. I'm sorry. Live.
I had to come back alive. To Dr. Jang's operating table. To where two glasses of scotch were waiting. And to where the sound of a bell could reach me.
I came out into the back alley behind Gyeongseong Station. Behind me, gunshots and shouting and train whistles tangled and screamed. I didn't look back.
The left arm hung limp. Blood ran freely through the gaps in the hide. My steps were slowing. The edges of my vision were black. The alley walls seemed to tilt.
One step.
One step.
One step.
Changsin-dong. To the door in front of Dr. Jang's clinic.
Two glasses of scotch are waiting.
'I have to get back.'
I walked.
The left hand was destroyed. But the right hand was warm.
Still. Warm.