Episode 4 - 1 [Before the Scaffold]
4 a.m. Not even a dog in the alleys of Changsin-dong.
I descended the stone steps between the shanties. My left arm was heavy. Inside the shirt sleeve, my entire forearm throbbed. The finger joints had swollen from opening and closing my fist through the night, and now I couldn't make a full fist. What I would have to squeeze was a lump of explosive harder than steel.
I knocked on the wooden door. Twice. The third knock was with my foot.
The bolt took longer than usual to slide open. The door swung out. Not opium smoke. Alcohol. Ethanol and iodine mixed together — the smell of surgical preparation.
Dr. Jang was standing at the bottom of the stairs. No pipe. For once, nothing in his mouth at all. Instead, both hands wore gloves — not surgical rubber. Thick work gloves, the kind used for tanning hides. The tremor in his ruined right hand was visible even through the leather.
"Come in."
Dr. Jang turned. I went down the stairs.
The clinic had changed.
The blood-stained gauze had been cleared from the operating table, and the stainless surface glittered under the oil lamp. But that wasn't what caught my eye first.
It was the objects lined up on the shelf.
A piece of cowhide, thick as a finger's width, edges cut rough. Next to it, a coil of industrial steel wire, pencil-lead thick, one end bent into a clip. And at the far end, a wire nipper with a wooden handle.
I scanned them one by one. The hide: blast shielding. The wire: compression and restraint. The nipper: for tightening the wire.
Dr. Jang lifted the hide from the shelf and slapped it onto the operating table. The damp leather hit the metal surface with a wet smack.
"Shirt off."
I unbuttoned my shirt. Getting the left arm out of the sleeve, the joint caught. The forearm had swollen overnight, thicker than the sleeve. I yanked it free; the lining scraped the skin. The bare left arm emerged under the lamp. From the back of the hand to the shoulder, veins stood out like earthworms. Beneath the skin, the twisted muscle fibers from repeated fractures and regenerations squirmed visibly.
Dr. Jang took my left arm. Gloved fingers traced upward from the wrist to the elbow. A surgeon's palpation — locating the bones.
"Radius and ulna are both set. A miracle."
"Tiger blood."
"Tiger blood or not, after today I can't make any promises."
He released my wrist and picked up the hide. The thick cowhide sagged in both hands.
"I'm wrapping your entire left arm in this. Then wire goes on top. Three sections — wrist, elbow, humerus."
He pressed the hide against my left wrist. Cold and damp, the leather met skin. The smell of a dead animal rose from it — the rancid oil of hide that hadn't been fully tanned.
"The hide isn't to stop shrapnel. It's to keep your bones from punching through the flesh."
I looked at Dr. Jang's face. His eyes were fixed on my arm while he spoke. Not his eyes but his hands were doing the work. He wrapped the hide twice around the wrist, gripped one end in his teeth to pull it tight, pressed it flat. When his trembling right hand pressed down over the leather, it shook faintly — but the wrapping motion itself was precise. What the torture had destroyed was the steadiness of the hand. Not the memory in it.
The hide climbed from wrist to forearm. Two layers. Three. The flesh compressed. The veins on the skin vanished beneath the leather. As the pressure built, numbness began rising from my fingertips. The ends of my fingers went cold. Blood flow was being cut off.
"Wire."
Dr. Jang lifted the steel coil from the shelf. As he unspooled it, the metal hissed loose. He pressed the wire end to the hide and began winding.
First turn.
The wire bit down over the hide and into the forearm muscle. Heavy pressure. Still bearable.
Second turn.
The wire wedged into the gaps between hide layers. Not just pressing flesh now — pressing bone. The radius and ulna were being forced together. My teeth locked.
Third turn.
"Kr—"
A strangled sound leaked between my lips. Dr. Jang didn't stop. He crimped the wire end with the nipper and moved up to the elbow. The same sequence repeated. Hide, wire, tighten. Hide, wire, tighten.
Wrapping the elbow joint, the muscle reflexively contracted. The arm tried to bend. Dr. Jang held the elbow straight with his left hand and wound with his right. The trembling hand took three times as long to complete one turn. But the knots were precise.
By the time he reached the humerus, the entire left arm had become something like the leg of a dead animal. Steel wire coiled like a snake over the dark red hide. Sensation was draining from my fingertips. I tried to flex my fingers. Only the thumb and index moved, barely. The other three refused.
"No blood flow."
I said it. Dr. Jang didn't nod.
"Obviously. Your left hand is dying right now."
He set the nipper on the shelf. Pulled off the gloves. His ruined right hand reappeared — the dislocated fingers trembling faintly.
"The moment I finished winding, the clock started. Two hours. You have to get the wire off within two hours. Past that, the tissue rots. That arm is gone."
Two hours.
I looked down at my left hand. Buried under hide and wire. The veins on the back of the hand had disappeared. The skin was deepening to a dark purple. The fingertips were slowly going black.
"Forty minutes to Gyeongseong Station. Thirty minutes waiting for the train. Fifty minutes for the operation and return."
Dr. Jang folded down his fingers one by one, counting time.
"Tight."
"Has it ever been comfortable?"
Dr. Jang exhaled through his nose. Not a laugh. The sound of resignation pushing air out of a room.
Silence settled. The oil lamp wick crackled.
Dr. Jang reached under the shelf and produced something wrapped in brown paper. He peeled it away to reveal a glass bottle of amber liquid. Scotch whisky.
"You were supposed to bring this."
He set the bottle on the operating table.
"I bought it myself. I collect debts reliably."
I looked at the bottle. The amber liquid caught the lamplight and glowed warm. The same color as Yeon-hwa's eyes.
I picked up my shirt. The left arm had swollen too much to fit the sleeve. I pulled the right arm through and draped the left side over my shoulder. The hide-and-wire arm jutted grotesquely from beneath the cloth.
I walked toward the stairs. First step. Behind me, Dr. Jang's voice came.
"Lee Kang."
I didn't stop. Second step.
"Come back alive."
Third step.
"We have to drink that scotch."
I stopped on the fourth step. Didn't look back. I couldn't look at his face. Just picturing Yeon-hwa's face was already making my feet heavy — if I saw this man's face too, I'd walk back down those stairs.
"Pour two glasses."
That was all I said. Then I climbed the rest of the stairs.
The door swung open. The pre-dawn air hit my face. Cold. March in Gyeongseong was still winter. I breathed in, and my lungs shrank with the chill.
My left hand was dying. The numbness that had started at the fingertips was climbing toward the palm. The two-hour clock had started ticking.
I walked out of the alley.
Toward Gyeongseong Station.
Carrying a dying left hand. The promise of coming back alive — engraved on the right.