Scene 1. Sealed
There were three muzzles.
Through the smoke, the outlines of uniforms rose. Three men. Rifles lowered from shoulders, leveled. Aimed at Lee Kang's face. No—aimed at what Lee Kang held.
Lee Kang's foot pressed the ground. The beginning of a leap. Muscles compressed. Force flowed from thigh to calf, from calf to toe. One stride would reach the first one's throat. Half a stride and the second one's rifle would be his. The third would be done before he could turn. Three seconds.
A sound came from his arms.
Cough.
Weaker than a kitten's cry. A cough rising from Yeonhwa's chest. The acrid smoke had reached her lungs. The cough came once. Just once. With that one cough, Yeonhwa's body trembled faintly inside Lee Kang's arms.
What trembled was Yeonhwa's body. What stopped was Lee Kang's.
Lee Kang's foot settled back to the ground. The compressed muscles released all at once. The leaping posture collapsed. The force gathered in his thighs drained away. The force gathered in his arms drained away. Instead, both arms wrapped more firmly around Yeonhwa's body. He hunched his shoulders. Curled his back round. The posture of building a cage around her.
The amber pupils contracted.
It was a thing that took three seconds. But in those three seconds, the recoil of his feet kicking off would travel up his arms, his arms would shake Yeonhwa, and that shaking would jolt Yeonhwa's bones. The bones of a body that was nothing but bone and skin. One leap could fracture a rib. One landing could dislocate a vertebra.
"Halt! We'll shoot!"
The military police officer's shout cut through the smoke. The metallic clack of a bolt drawn back.
Lee Kang turned.
His back to the muzzles. His back to the soldiers. Yeonhwa still cradled.
To his left stood the post of a shanty about to collapse. A wooden post half-burned and thinned by fire. Lee Kang's right foot struck it. Not kicked—shoved. The post snapped, and the shanty's roof caved in. Burning shingles spilled down, and black smoke and flame surged upward together.
A screen.
Lee Kang dove into the smoke. Dove was not the right word. He crouched. Dropping his body as low as it would go, pressing Yeonhwa to his chest, his back curled round, he hid himself inside the smoke. Closer to crawling than running.
Gunshots rang behind him. Bang. Bang. Bullets cut through the smoke. The sound of air tearing brushed past Lee Kang's ear. No hit. The smoke had blinded their aim.
Lee Kang's right hand reached back.
He seized Doctor Jang's collar. The lapel of the coat choked at Doctor Jang's throat as it pulled. Doctor Jang stumbled along behind him. Lee Kang did not look back. He hauled. Into the smoke. Into the alley. Into the dark.
Two more gunshots rang out. They did not pierce the smoke. The gunshots receded.
Lee Kang, holding Yeonhwa, dragging Doctor Jang, vanished into the darkness of a burning alley.
Scene 2. A Burning Back
Both walls of the alley were burning.
The roof of the left-side shanty had already collapsed. The wall of the right-side shanty was tilting inward. A narrow path between the two buildings. A width that barely allowed two shoulders to pass. From both sides, flames reached inward and poured heat into the center of the path.
Lee Kang walked.
The walk was strange. Not the way a human walks. Knees bent too deeply. Waist stooped low. Yet the upper body alone held perfectly upright. So the arms holding Yeonhwa would not sway. So the impact of each step would not rise upward. His knees were absorbing every shock. With each step, pressure climbed from inside the knee joint as though cartilage were grinding itself away. He did not feel it.
Embers fell.
From the right-side roof. A half-burned shard of wood spun once in the air and landed on Lee Kang's right shoulder. Where the coat was already torn. On the newly regenerated flesh beneath. The instant wood met flesh, a sizzle. The sound skin makes touching red-hot iron. The flesh cooked. A smell rose.
Lee Kang did not flinch.
To flinch was to twist the body. To twist was to shake Yeonhwa.
Another ember fell. From the left this time. It grazed Lee Kang's cheek. The skin on his cheek heated. A burn the size of a hand-span branded itself there. Flesh swelled. Lee Kang's eyes did not blink.
Yeonhwa's hair stirred at Lee Kang's neck.
In the hot wind. In the wind the flames made. The ends of her hair fluttered, and a single strand grazed Lee Kang's cheek. Across the burn. The sensation of that strand was sharper than the burn itself.
Lee Kang's gaze dropped. He looked at the ends of Yeonhwa's hair. Fire was close. One hand-span from those ends. Heat was already licking them. Not burning. Not yet.
Lee Kang's left hand rose behind Yeonhwa's head.
He gathered her hair in. Took it into his hand. So it would not fly free. So it would not touch the fire.
"Hold your breath."
Lee Kang whispered. Low enough that only Yeonhwa's ear could catch it. A sound wedged into the gaps between the roar of burning.
"Don't breathe the smoke in."
He drew the hem of his coat across Yeonhwa's face. Over mouth and nose. The coat would filter one layer of smoke. How effective, he did not know. He did it anyway.
Lee Kang's face was bare. He was drinking the smoke whole. His lungs were filling with the acrid. Lee Kang did not cough. To cough was to shake his arms.
The burn on his cheek was growing. The longer the heat had at him, the more flesh cooked. His right shoulder was burning too. A spark had caught the coat and the cloth was spreading the fire wider. Smoke rose from Lee Kang's back.
His back was burning.
He felt it burning. Felt, calculated, ignored. His back burning was his back's affair. What lay in his arms was his arms' affair. The back would grow new flesh. It had just done so. As long as the new flesh Yeonhwa's blood had made still circulated through him. The back could be burned all it wanted.
Yeonhwa's hair could not.
Lee Kang's hand stayed closed around her hair, would not release. So that not a single strand could slip free between his fingers. Not one.
When they reached the bend in the alley, the heat fell back one layer. The alley had passed into a stretch the fire had not yet caught. Smoke was rising from Lee Kang's back. The back of his coat was half burned away. The flesh beneath was cooked red.
Lee Kang did not stop walking.
The ground ahead darkened. The terrain dropped. A slope downward. From below, the smell of water rose. Not water. Rancid water. A sewer.
Lee Kang set one foot down.
Scene 3. A Relic in the Filth
Inside the sewer, dark.
The light from the streets above could not penetrate. The ceiling was low. Low enough to touch Lee Kang's head. He had to stoop. Stooping while keeping his upper body straight. So Yeonhwa would not tilt.
Water beneath his feet.
Hard to call it water. A black liquid risen to knee height. Rotten food scraps and filth and the carcasses of rats floated in it. The reek that stung the nose was concentrated inside the sewer's narrow space. Lee Kang's nostrils flared once, then closed.
Lee Kang's foot stepped into the black water.
Cold. The filth wound around his ankles and rose. To his knees. The foul liquid soaked his trousers and reached for the hem of his coat.
Lee Kang's posture changed.
His knees bent deeper. But his upper body straightened more. A deformed posture. Beneath the sewer's low ceiling, head ducked while keeping the arms at chest height and the body cradled in those arms lifted clear of the water. The full weight of his body settled into his knee joints. Yeonhwa's weight added itself. A feather's weight, but in this posture, the angle of his arms made her heavier.
Lee Kang walked.
One step. The black water parted with a thick splash. Two. Three. With each step, pressure rose from inside the knee like bone grinding bone. A regenerated body. A body perfectly restored moments ago. That perfect body was grinding itself down to maintain this deformed posture.
Doctor Jang followed behind. Bag held above his head. The water reached his waist. His breathing grew labored. A coughing fit broke. The coughs echoed against the sewer's narrow walls and resonated.
Lee Kang did not stop.
"A hospital." Lee Kang said. Facing forward. "Once we're out of here, we find a hospital first."
Doctor Jang's footsteps paused one beat, then moved again.
"She breathed too much smoke."
Lee Kang said. As though speaking to himself.
"She needs clean air. Then she'll be fine."
Doctor Jang did not answer.
The non-answer was the answer. Lee Kang did not read that silence. Chose not to. The lilac fragrance trembled once inside his lungs. That tremor draped itself over Doctor Jang's silence. The silence vanished.
Yeonhwa's breath touched Lee Kang's chest. Faintly. The interval was long. Twice as long as a normal person's between inhale and exhale. Lee Kang's brain was counting that interval. Counting without calculating. To calculate would yield a number, and a number would force him to confront its meaning.
"It's the smoke."
Lee Kang said once more. Though no one had asked.
Only the sloshing of the black water filled the sewer.
Scene 4. A Shield of Flesh
At the sewer's end was a grate.
Rusted iron lattice. Light from outside seeped through the gaps. Not red light. White light. A searchlight. Lee Kang lowered himself before the grate and looked out through the slats.
He saw the barbed wire.
Twenty paces from the sewer's mouth. Iron stakes driven across the road and the thorned steel line strung between them drew the boundary of the quarantine zone. Beyond the wire lay darkness. Gyeongseong's night. Streets the fire had not reached. Cross to that side and—
There were people in front of the wire.
Residents of the slum. People who had fled the fire. A woman with a bundle on her back. A man holding a child. The old. The young. About twenty of them. Massed before the wire. Pressing. Pressing even as the thorned wire tore their flesh. Because the fire was behind them. When fire comes from behind, even a blade ahead is what a person walks toward.
Beyond the wire, military police stood.
About ten. Three of them were setting something heavy onto a mount. A machine gun. The muzzle was aimed at the people in front of the wire.
Lee Kang's pupils contracted.
"Modore!"
Back. The officer shouted. In Japanese. Not a loudspeaker. A bare voice. The people did not fall back. There was nowhere to fall back to. The fire was at their backs.
Lee Kang's ears caught the sound.
The sound of loading. The heavy metallic draw of a machine gun's bolt sliding back.
Lee Kang's gaze moved from the people to the soldiers, from the soldiers to the machine gun, from the gun to the wire. A calculation ran. Not emotion. What turned in one half of his brain was arithmetic.
When the machine gun fired, the people would fall. The fallen bodies would pile across the wire. The piled bodies would press the thorns down and make a path. The soldiers would have to reload. The time required to reload. Three seconds. Five at most.
Lee Kang's jaw moved once. Teeth closed, then released. In the black water, his fist clenched, then released.
The machine gun fired.
Sound was not first. Light was. Orange flashes burst in sequence from the muzzle. Then sound. Ratatatatat. A blunt, fast, unceasing rupture of noise tore the night air to shreds.
People fell.
The front row first. Those pressed against the wire bent backward as they collapsed. The row behind them fell on top. Screams broke. Screams cut off. The bullets were faster than the screams. Bodies caught on the wire's thorns hung dangling. Blood spread across the road.
Lee Kang watched it through the grate.
His face did not move. The amber pupils held the slaughter. Held it but did not waver. What turned inside those eyes was not emotion but calculation. The number of fallen bodies. The positions of bodies caught on the wire. The direction of the soldiers' attention. Whether the reload had begun.
The machine gun stopped.
The belt was empty. One soldier dragged over a new belt and began feeding it into the side of the gun. The other soldiers held their rifles ready and were checking for movement among the fallen. Their attention concentrated on the wire.
"Now."
Lee Kang said.
A metallic voice empty of feeling. He did not look back at Doctor Jang. He set his hand against the grate and pushed. The rusted iron whined, then snapped free.
Lee Kang stepped out of the sewer.
Yeonhwa cradled. Body lowered. He ran across the road in a crawl. Toward the wire. Toward where the people had fallen.
Bodies were piled.
On the wire. Below it. Beside it. Bodies hung from thorns and bodies sprawled face-down lay layered together. Blood ran across them. Still-warm blood. Lee Kang's foot stepped on that blood. Slipped. His knee dropped. Beneath his planted knee, someone's arm twitched. Someone still alive. Lee Kang's knee pressed that arm down. He rose.
He walked across the bodies.
The wire's thorns tore his trousers. Scraped his calf. He bled. Whether Lee Kang's blood or a corpse's blood, indistinguishable. Lee Kang did not stop. The bodies were pressing the thorns down and making a road. Across that road, Lee Kang walked.
A soldier turned his head.
In Lee Kang's direction. Raised his rifle. Lee Kang was already crossing the wire. One more step across the pile of bodies. Past the wire. To the other side. Toward the darkness.
A shot rang out. Bang. The bullet grazed the hem of Lee Kang's coat. No hit. Lee Kang's back was already vanishing into the darkness.
Doctor Jang followed. Stepping on bodies. Crossing the wire. His coat torn by thorns.
The darkness swallowed all three.
Behind the wire, the machine gun fired again. But not at Lee Kang. New people were pressing toward the wire to escape the fire. Gunshots and screams mingled.
Lee Kang did not listen.
He walked into the dark alleys of Gyeongseong. Yeonhwa cradled. Her hair gathered in his left hand. His right hand bracing her back. Each vertebra pressed against his palm like a string of beads.
His coat was half burned away. The flesh of his back was cooked red with burns. Blood ran down his calf. His cheek was swollen.
Not a single strand of Yeonhwa's hair had burned.
Lee Kang's footsteps receded into the dark. What was left behind: footprints wet with black water, scraps of half-burned coat fallen from his back, and the unceasing gunshots beyond the wire.