Chương 37: S.04 Memory of the Clock 07(03) - Parousia

Scene 03_03. The worst of it was the North Gate. The North Gate, which had held the passage where death crosses, had been swallowed by the black water rising from the River of the Dead, and even the thick wooden planks of the main gate itself had been split in half.

On top of the high North Gate watchtower, maybe a dozen members of the 대민관(Dae-min-gwan_Human Affairs Office) task force — unable to even dress the ragged strips of their own torn flesh — remained, guarding the shamans who had already fallen unconscious inside their ring. Half-tangled with the straw of what looked like hundreds of straw wraiths, they were barely managing to keep each other from being dragged off — but this wasn't holding.

This was being yanked around like a handful of toys, managing only to swat at the straw enough to not get ripped apart from each other. Damp black-soaked straw whipped around one task-force member's neck like a lash and dropped her out of the line, straight onto the ground. Sensing the whole formation was about to collapse, the people beside her threw everything they had into keeping her from being hauled off. But the straw of hundreds of wraiths wasn't something two or three pairs of hands could block.

The straw of the wraith leading the charge — along with its body — was split in two, blunt and clean. A tall sword in each hand, both cutting at once, sheared through the whipping straw in the same stroke. Ji-min: Re-form the line!! Fast!! Nam Ji-min, Deputy of the Human Affairs Office, stood in front of her task force and her shamans, bloodied belt of her robe hanging undone, body already past its limits — and she still held the guarding line.

From her short bobbed hair, black water and blood tangled together and dripped off her jaw in fat drops onto the ground. The crowd of straw wraiths moved their thick straw bodies with a sluggish wetness and took in Ji-min's hostility. Ji-min re-clenched the pair of silver blades in both hands, slid her trembling foot carefully to brush the board, and readied her dance figure. She checked the faceless limbs of the straw wraiths, counted them, and closed her eyes.

Leaving only the minimum number of people behind to protect the shamans, the task force stepped forward to support Ji-min and dragged their exhausted legs to her side. If the North Gate was overrun, they thought, the passage where death crosses in the living world is broken. A passage that can't be controlled might call in endless death held by the world beyond. Eyes still shut, Ji-min exhaled a breath, steady, like pulling a thread through cloth. She opened her eyes again and asked the air, voice drained.

Ji-min: What grievance weighs on you so heavy that you would trample the very world of the living you once walked. She wasn't expecting an answer from straw wraiths that had no mouths, no noses. She knew it wouldn't come. She asked anyway. That was what she had always done. Ji-min, right to the last, wouldn't forget that her nature was to be a shaman. The straw wraiths made no movement. The very stillness of them struck Ji-min as suspicious.

She kept the sword-dance held back, ready but not yet drawn, and watched the swarm of wraiths carpeting the watchtower carefully. A great rush of wind came — nothing like the flap of a straw raven's wings, far larger. Ji-min's eyes snapped wide, and she called out to everyone around her. Ji-min: Take cover!! Through the black water and the rolling dark shadow where visibility had all but died around the North Gate, a wind thick with murder cut through, vicious.

At Ji-min's shout, the task force threw themselves over the shamans still unconscious to shield them. Just as Ji-min swung both blades to snap into a hurried 경기검무(Gyeong-gi-geom-mu_Gyeonggi sword dance), every straw wraith that had been standing still all at once lashed out to stop her. The damp straw drove into Ji-min's limbs and throat. Wrapped or pierced, Ji-min jolted, then locked in place where she stood.

The great wind that had started to pound down brushed past her pinned body and split her blood open, spraying it into the air. She had been through so many near-deaths, she had told herself. No panorama of her life came. The common claim that such a sight rolls through one's head at the last moment — that it didn't come for her now even went so far as to provoke a small self-accusation: maybe she had simply never faced a true edge before. Dying here wasn't what frightened her.

She had always believed the thing she'd worry about most, whenever her end came, would be how she died. She only hoped — don't let it be this powerless. As her body began to lose its strength, wronged, still pinned, every length of straw holding her ruptured and fell away at once, as if shorn through. Caked in her own blood, Ji-min's eyes flew open, and she sank weakly to her knees, watching a red thread bundle streak forward and lodge itself between the roof tiles.

Ji-min's slow gaze followed the red thread bundle embedded in the tile. The sound of wings hadn't died down. Her slow head turned sideways, and she looked flat, out past the watchtower. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Riding that red thread up, a presence climbed onto the platform and stepped between Ji-min and the straw wraiths that had tried to kill her. If she'd had strength left, she would have said: run. The person who just saved me — run.

But her throat was already torn past the point of sound. The blood would not stop coming. The one who had stepped in front of her pressed a small 복주머니(Bok-ju-meo-ni_Fortune pouch) into Ji-min's hand. The exchange was quick, but to Ji-min, sitting face-to-face with her death, it all moved at impossibly slow speed. Shaking hands barely managing to close around the fortune pouch, Ji-min thought: if I can pull myself together fast, I can shout a warning to whoever came for me.

Only then — at the very edge of the watchtower's railing — did she see the thing flapping wings the size of a house. The bird-shape on the far side of Ji-min's blood-blurred vision was blocked from her eyes by the back of the one who had just stepped up onto the platform. EEYAH, SSibal, what kind of bird is that big. Scene 03_04. Ye-ju's vision, mid-violent-figure, turned red in the span of a small eddy of wind sliding in alongside the clear ringing of a handbell. No time to feel pain.

The white paper wasn't even visible anymore. Behind the red wash across her sight, the pain came much later. Ye-ju's eyes had burst. She screamed, belated. She swung her blade through empty air, barely held her footing as she staggered back — but the eyes she was staggering back with were in no state to be used. As the white paper settled in soft drifts, 운혜(Un-hye_Everyday traditional shoes) — a pair familiar to everyone — settled onto that white paper. The landing Un-hye brushed the floor as if drawn along it.

The clear chime of a handbell poured down like something bursting open, bright and overwhelming. Scene 03_05. Yu-seok stood with his arms crossed in front of the quarters of The Oldest. He had been leaning his weight against a Hae-chi stone statue. At the sound of a footstep pressing into the narrow dirt path, Yu-seok wore a small smile and heavily lifted the body he had left resting for a while. Yu-seok bowed deep from the waist toward the presence that had come to him. Yu-seok: You've come, Strategist.

Hee-jin, meeting Yu-seok's greeting, stood at the entry of the Oldest's quarters at headquarters and bowed deep at the waist toward Yu-seok in return. Hee-jin: I would rather we hadn't been late — but the shape of things is a sight to see. Yu-seok: I think you are, at least, not too late. Hee-jin: Thank you for herding them all into one place. Yu-seok: Headquarters must always remain intact. Always. That way, even when the current Oldest has passed, she can hand the seat down whole.

Even at Yu-seok's open threat, Hee-jin didn't flinch. This was a road everyone had started walking with their eyes open. Hee-jin smiled lightly and nodded. She dropped a small head-bow and answered Yu-seok's blunt threat in a tidy voice. Hee-jin: Whatever the will turns out to be — the Executive Secretary's contribution was considerable. Yu-seok: Thank you. Past the conversation between the two of them, at each of the four gates, black sand, white hemp cloth, and a red thread bundle shot up into the air.

At the South Gate, where the death lay thickest, something deeper than any death was rising. Yu-seok: Well, then — I'll go see to the reorganization. Hee-jin: Yes. Understood. Yu-seok: Please convey my apology for not being able to deliver my regards in person. I'd be grateful if you could pass that along. Hee-jin: Understood. No need to worry. Receiving Hee-jin's reply, Yu-seok carefully removed himself from the spot. Scene 03_06. It was burning itself into her eyes in slow, clear detail.

The helpless defeat that comes with standing in front of your own death — that could only be despair. What dragged Ji-min out of the deep despair she was sinking into was a sword-stroke she knew better than her own pulse. The sword in the hand of the person standing in front of her — right now — was a sword Ji-min could not possibly fail to recognize. Thin and slender, forged of silver, no ornament, only the handprints of nameless people soaked deep into it over long time. A blade. An origin.

On the reverse edge, the metal had turned black — a color telling her no living hand could still use this side — but the person who had just stepped in to shield her held that familiar blade, moved her feet with a familiar rhythm, and was weaving a familiar figure of dance woven into her 무(Mu_Martial-way). A figure Ji-min knew. And that figure, unlike the one she had always seen it wielded with, only threw out a single, thin strand of black water.

An 어둑시니(Eo-duk-si-ni_Dusk-devourer), a massive bird-shaped death, was carved in a single stroke into five pieces — burst apart into black water. All of it unfolded in slow motion beside the watchtower. As the Dusk-devourer ruptured, the straw wraiths bound by a red thread bundle and a blue thread bundle burst open together in the same instant. Scene 03_07. Black wire rippled outward.

Un-hye, drifting like a butterfly past the white paper, took Ye-ju's throat — Ye-ju, who couldn't even open her eyes — clean off in a single motion. Ye-ju couldn't even see the black wire coming. She only heard the sound of wind. Only the familiar chime of a handbell rang out. The figure of the dance couldn't even be watched. Ye-ju, whose eyes had been torn out first, couldn't squeeze out a scream before her head dropped to the ground.

Before Ye-ju's head finished hitting the dirt, an endless rite had already begun behind it. A familiar figure of dance. But the one dancing was not familiar. The rippling black wire drew the black water held inside the dancer, split apart into fine filaments, and scattered outward in every direction. Every death being forged from the black water burst and tore open.

The monsters and shadows shaped by the black shadow and the black water river that had covered the entire wide grounds of headquarters — at the continuing figure, at the wing-beats of the butterfly scattering softly — received a black kind of consolation, a black kind of rebuke, and began to return. The figure bent every will, every hostility, in that yard. Carried on the rite riding the figure of dance, every death that had settled across headquarters thinned out, all at once. All of you. Stop.