Chương 28: S.04 Memory of the Clock 06(01) - Parousia

Scene 01. In the middle of the road, a wide SUV idled at a red light, and the headrests on its seats still wore their factory plastic, untorn. Around the passenger seat and driver's seat, stickers sat here and there—the kind children press onto surfaces—and Jun-hyeok, unable to bring himself to peel them off, kept fidgeting only with the headrest of the passenger seat he occupied. Ju-hyeon, who could not hide the tension on her face, snapped at Jun-hyeok beside her, who was rubbing the plastic wrap. Ju-hyeon: Yah!!

At Ju-hyeon's irritated shout, Jun-hyeok flinched from the plastic he had been worrying on what still looked like Ju-hyeon's brand-new car, and stole a glance at her mood. Ju-hyeon: Sit still, would you!! Jun-hyeok, seemingly annoyed by the rustling plastic brushing against his hair, leaned his back loosely against the seat and kept his head lifted off the headrest, sitting in a half-cocked posture. Jun-hyeok: Uh, Chief. Ju-hyeon: What. Jun-hyeok: Aren't you scared? Ju-hyeon: Yah. You don't know those people?

You didn't see them? SSibal, of course I'm fucking scared. Is that even a question to be shitting out right now? Jun-hyeok: Then we don't have to go. It's not even our job. We already said we were pulling our hands off it. Ju-hyeon: So I told you, you didn't have to tag along. Why'd you come crawling after and start this Jiral. Jun-hyeok: It's... sending you alone felt wrong. And. Honestly, the way we just quit the other time sat wrong with me too. And, Je-hak: They saved our lives twice. Hard to just ignore that.

Ju-hyeon: Yeah. That's why I'm here too. Jun-hyeok: But, can we actually handle this, just us? Ju-hyeon didn't bother answering Jun-hyeok's question. All that sat in her was the small hope that they wouldn't be the only ones there. The car began to creep forward as the signal shifted. Ju-hyeon spotted the redevelopment complex rising in the distance and flicked her eyes to the rearview mirror. Behind Ju-hyeon at the wheel and Jun-hyeok in the passenger seat, three hulking figures filled the back seats.

The same men who had come to So-hui's home the time before. Ju-hyeon: You brought everything, right? Jun-hyeok lifted a revolver-shaped pistol. He checked the eight rounds loaded inside, then slid it back into his coat. Jun-hyeok: Yes. Wallet too. Ju-hyeon: Then, yeah. We're set. We'll be set. We have to be. Ju-hyeon pressed the accelerator and pushed the car a little faster.

It was the kind of early dawn where sleep hadn't fully left the eyes, but the sharp winter wind piling in through the open window scoured any remaining drowsiness clean in an instant. Scene 02. They couldn't even cut away the scattering hemp strands. The hemp wrapped around the napes of Ju-hee and Jeong-hyeon, and the two of them—drawn by the force of Gyeong-seo yanking her 삼베(Sambae_Hemp cloth) hard—flew toward Gyeong-seo.

Gyeong-seo, as if brushing aside two corpses with ease, bundled them in the unfurled Hemp cloth and flung them out past the entrance she herself had been about to step through. Ju-hee and Jeong-hyeon's neck bones snapped with a dull thud as they struck the wall along the corridor. Though the two had absorbed a massive impact, Black Water shimmered along their throats, and their twisted neck bones wrenched themselves back into place in an instant.

They quickly gathered their bodies and tried to push inside again, but the Hemp cloth, drawn wide like a curtain to block the open doorway, stood upright as a barrier and held the two back. Gyeong-seo pressed inside at once, then let her hemp strands fly and swallowed whole every strand of the 금줄(Geumjul_Ritual Taboo Rope to suppress power) that had bound So-hui. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Gyeong-seo's 주술(Jusul_Incantation/Sorcery) had Hemp cloth as its wellspring.

The Ritual Taboo Rope was nothing more than a single instrument shaped from hemp. The Ritual Taboo Rope was a sacred implement only Gyeong-seo could weave. That such a sacred implement had been bent to this vile use—that was what turned her stomach most. But this was not the moment to linger on that revulsion.

Having drawn every length of the Ritual Taboo Rope back into her own keeping, Gyeong-seo moved toward So-hui, who—though all her bindings had been released—could not move, and could only wring out the barest writhing against the locked-in pain. Gyeong-seo: Guide. Please, bear it just a little longer. At Gyeong-seo's composed plea, So-hui—even while drowning in that unspeakable pain—managed to give a small nod.

Once she had confirmed So-hui's resolve, Gyeong-seo unraveled her hemp strands at once and wove them into fine, threadlike filaments. The woven hemp strands slipped into every eye of every needle Ju-hee had driven into her. When Gyeong-seo flicked her hand back lightly, every needle threaded onto the hemp ripped free all at once. So-hui gave only the smallest twitch, swallowed the scream she had been about to loose, and held on to the end.

Gyeong-seo drew 잿가루(Jaet-garu_Grey Ash) from her cuff and passed it to So-hui. Even without a trace of pain, So-hui carried the horror of the trauma in her, and her trembling fingertips could not quite obey her. Barely managing to receive the Grey Ash, So-hui tipped the ash wrapped in paper into her mouth. Every hole where a needle had pierced her softened and closed. Every paper-staple spine that had tortured her torn shoulder shut fell loose and dropped away.

Gyeong-seo watched in silence as So-hui took the time to gather her trembling body. A little later, seeing So-hui begin to settle with a small breath, Gyeong-seo knelt before her and bowed her head low. Gyeong-seo: Show the path. I will follow. Scene 03. The night was pitch black. Inside the dark that arrived with the deepest hour of dawn, a small altar sat at the foot of a desolate building. A presence had cut across the basement of some dilapidated retail block and entered, and now traced a familiar gesture.

He shook the white 싸리나무(Ssari-namu_Bush clover branch) in his hand and scattered small seeds in every direction. The scattered seeds circled the presence and drew up a pale blue 인불(In-bul_Ghost Light). The black candle burning at the altar gave too little light to see clearly ahead. As the seeds drifted outward, the Ghost Light lit the dank basement of the abandoned retail block.

When the light brightened, the small, desolate vermin that always gathered where no one lived scurried off quickly, hunting some other shadow. Above the darkened altar, wrapped in countless turns of Ritual Taboo Rope, a transparent glass jar came into view—set beyond the long shadow cast by the black candle burning on the altar. He stared blankly at the shadow of the glass jar before him and turned it over and over in his mind.

Was this truly something that had to be done this way—and yet, if he could only seize it, the path that had so long been treated as a mere branch line of his lineage would finally change. The Ghost Light the seeds spread around him felt, today of all days, pitiful. His phone buzzed. The ringer hadn't sounded, but a short, insistent vibration reached him. Yeong-min slid his hand into his pocket and checked the single message waiting on the screen. We're heading out now.

Holding a light laugh and a sigh he could not name, he shut the screen off and slipped it back into his pocket. He judged that hesitation would cost him the moment. He shook out the Bush clover branch in his hand again. White seeds budded along the branch he had held, and the wood itself sharpened whole into something keen. Yeong-min no longer hesitated—he swung his hand toward the Ritual Taboo Rope. Scene 04.

They drew up Black Water to soak the hemp strands and strained to tear them however they could, but the strands of Hemp cloth—capable of turning both Incantation/Sorcery and death to naught—would not yield so much as a single fiber. Jeong-hyeon and Ju-hee paused to gather their breath and straightened the necks that had been snapped. The neck Ju-hee had just rolled shattered again into fragments, and Black Water burst outward.

Jeong-hyeon turned wide-eyed to scan behind Ju-hee, but the thing to be wary of was not whoever stood at Ju-hee's back. 검은 모래(Geomeun-morae_Black Sand) erupted from his own forehead and pulverized Jeong-hyeon's skull into pieces even finer than Ju-hee's. The head was gone, but he did not die. He had no life left to take. Ju-hee, half-crouched, pivoted her steps and faced the one who had blown her head off yet again. Though she met him without a neck, she knew. She hadn't seen—but the pain was familiar. I-seon: So.

Who pulled that corpse out of the morgue back then. In an instant, Black Water burst out, and Ju-hee's head returned to its original form. Whole again, Ju-hee smirked and threw the barb back at I-seon. Ju-hee: Curious? Jeong-hyeon's body, too, was turning to face Yeon-su—the one who had cast Black Sand at his back. Jeong-hyeon's head, now intact again, looked down on Yeon-su with an air of lazy contempt. Yeon-su was not short, but Jeong-hyeon stood tall enough to look down on her all the same.

Yeon-su kept her eyes raised in a cold, unmoving glare, refusing to withdraw the resentful angle of her gaze at Jeong-hyeon looking down at her like trash. Jeong-hyeon: You know, the more I look, the more you remind me of that brother of yours. Yeon-su didn't even feel it worth a reply. At Yeon-su's silence—pure disregard, nothing more—Jeong-hyeon carried a sneering laugh and raised one arm high. He sent a signal somewhere. A single gunshot rang out.

One shot, loud enough to rattle the empty, derelict lot of the redevelopment-slated apartment complex clean through. Yet after the shot, nothing moved. Yeon-su and I-seon were both untouched. Jeong-hyeon stared at Yeon-su with a dubious expression and, lowering his hand slowly, turned his head toward where the shot had come from. More shots followed. Jeong-hyeon's head—just as it turned to look outside—burst apart without a trace. It was a single shot, but one nothing like the shot that had rung out just before it.

Jeong-hyeon's head blew apart. His body blew apart. Scene 05. Steadying his breath, he kept his crosshairs pinned through Jeong-hyeon's body beyond the scope. In the radio tucked into his ear, Ju-hyeon's voice came through. Ju-hyeon: Is it working? Jun-hyeok measured his breathing and emptied the short magazine in its entirety. The anti-materiel rifle kicked with a massive recoil, yet Jun-hyeok, built big, lay flat on a small rise not far from the apartment building.

Jun-hyeok: The round that girl back in the elevator handed us, right? Lying flat on the ground, he finished a practiced reload and swapped the remaining magazine. Beside Jun-hyeok, a corpse sprawled on the cold ground, foaming Black Water from its mouth. A gaping hole sat in its forehead, and hemp strands gripped the entire head in a fist as the body shook and thrashed against the frozen ground. Ju-hyeon: That's the one.

He chambered the round with smooth efficiency, then set about turning the body of Jeong-hyeon—freshly healed—back into rags. Jun-hyeok: I can't tell what's different about it, but the one next to me is foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. I mean, he's not dying-dying, but he can't move. Convulsing so hard it's messing with my concentration a little, but — Ju-hyeon: Careful. The signal's gone in either way. Jun-hyeok pulled the trigger as he listened to Ju-hyeon's transmission.

Every time the anti-materiel rifle bucked, Jeong-hyeon dropped pieces of body—not flesh—onto the ground. Jun-hyeok: But, uh, Even through the seamless reloads and successive shots, Jun-hyeok's sly worry would not quit. Jun-hyeok: I know this isn't technically a person, but — this isn't gonna end up on some kind of incident report later, is it??