Scene 1. Silver Bell
His shoulder struck the alley wall.
The left side. The torn side. Exposed muscle where flesh had been ripped away met the rough surface of brick. It took one beat to feel it. The single beat for his brain to receive and process the pain signal.
He felt it.
Lee Kang's back arched like a bow. His knees folded. He slid down the wall. His back scraped against brick through the shredded coat panel, skin peeling away. Each time the four claw-wounds passed over the brick's ridges, the edges of the gashes spread open and half-dried blood seeped out.
He slumped to the ground.
The back of his head touched the wall. His vision went white. The entire field bleached out, then slowly returned. What he saw when it returned was a narrow Gyeongseong alley. Between the walls on either side, the sky showed through like a thin crack. The sky was red. The fire from the Unit 731 branch he had left behind was staining Gyeongseong's night.
His ribs rattled with every movement.
The two cracked ones scraped against each other with every breath. They parted on the inhale, struck on the exhale. The sensation of bone meeting bone resonated as a dull vibration inside his chest. Lee Kang's breathing went shallow. Deep breaths ground the bones. Shallow. Short. Panting like a dog.
The coat was heavy.
The fabric soaked with a mix of other people's blood and his own was hardening. Dried blood was stiff. It turned the fabric rigid as a board. Each time he moved his shoulder, the dried blood cracked with a stiff sound.
Lee Kang's left hand moved.
To the coat's inner pocket.
What met his fingertips was cold. The temperature of iron. One degree colder than the night air. His fingers traced the canteen's outline. Cap. Body. Bottom. No cracks. No dents. No leaking.
The pain withdrew one layer.
Something else moved into its place. A vibration rising from the canteen's cold surface. Too faint to call a vibration. A sound. Too thin to call a sound. Lee Kang's brain translated it.
A silver bell.
From inside the coat's inner pocket, a clear chime seeped along the canteen's cold surface. Very thin. Very quiet. Once with each breath. Matching Lee Kang's shallow breathing.
The corner of Lee Kang's mouth eased, barely.
"...You're safe."
A whisper mixed with blood. His throat was seized up. His vocal cords might have been damaged. He pushed through anyway.
"It's okay."
His left hand wrapped gently around the canteen. No force in the finger joints. Not gripping—cradling. Something fragile. Something breathing.
"My blood... didn't get on you."
His right hand traced the back of his left. There were bloodstains. His own blood. His right hand wiped the blood from his left. On the coat's hem. Before it could reach the canteen.
The silver bell chimed once more. Lee Kang's eyes sank half-shut.
He rested against that sound for one beat.
Just one.
From the distance, a whistle sounded. Long and sharp. Lee Kang's eyes opened again. Amber still lingered. Inside the black pupils, not yet fully settled.
He rose slowly with his back against the wall. Brick scraped his wounds. He looked toward the end of the alley with his left hand resting over the coat's inner pocket.
Beyond the alley, lights were moving.
Scene 2. The Net
Lights were moving.
At the alley's end, the main road opened up as though Gyeongseong's night had turned to broad daylight.
Searchlights. Three. No, four. Spotlights mounted on rooftops and lampposts stretched long arms of white light across the road, sweeping the surface. The arms rotated slowly, stripping away the darkness. Where the light touched was daytime; where it passed was night. The boundary never stopped moving.
Lee Kang pressed his body into the corner of the alley and peered out.
Barricades had been set up. Across the main road. A rough barrier of wooden stakes and tangled wire. Behind it stood men in military uniform. Military police. Fifteen. Twenty. Rifles slung over their shoulders, standing at even intervals, stopping everyone who passed. Checking papers, rifling through bundles, examining faces.
"Tsūkōshō wo dase!" Show your transit pass!
Dry Japanese cut through the night air. People lined up before the barricade, heads bowed, pulling out documents. Koreans. A man in laborer's clothes, a woman with a bundle on her head, an elderly man holding a child's hand.
Alongside them, military dogs moved. Two of them. Muzzled, dragging their front paws, sniffing. They barked sharply at intervals. Each time they barked, the shoulders of those in line flinched inward.
Lee Kang's nostrils flared.
Beyond the barricade, a larger building came into view. Gyeongseong Station. Vehicles lined the plaza in front of the station building. Black sedans. Military trucks. And at the station entrance, red cloth hung draped. The Hinomaru flag, and beneath it a regimental banner. Someone's arrival was being awaited.
A loudspeaker shrieked with a metallic sound.
"—Tonight, on the occasion of a senior official of the Governor-General's office arriving, transit around Gyeongseong Station will be strictly restricted. Suspicious persons will be immediately—"
Lee Kang's ears cut the sound away.
Senior official. Barricade. Transit restriction. Lee Kang's brain did not assemble those words. No need to assemble them. Politics was not a beast's language. His brain calculated one thing only.
There was no way out.
A searchlight swept past the alley entrance. Lee Kang's body pulled back one hand-span. The light licked his toes and turned away. The blood on his coat caught the light and glistened for an instant.
Stepping onto the road like this meant the end. A blood-soaked coat. A shredded back. Pupils still flecked with amber. The moment he joined the checkpoint line, muzzles would swing his way.
Lee Kang's gaze traced the barricade, the searchlights, the dogs, counted the military police, read the vehicle positioning in the plaza.
A net.
Tightly woven. Not a rat could slip through.
His left hand pressed the coat's inner pocket once. The canteen was in place. His breathing steadied for one beat, then his ribs rattled and quickened again.
He needed to get past the net.
To the safe house. To Yeonhwa. Carrying this canteen.
He turned back into the alley. To find another path through the darkness. Over the walls, across the rooftops. But his back wounds would not allow the rooftops. Raising his arms would split the wounds. Splitting them would send blood surging.
He had to break through at ground level.
His stride moved again. Deeper into the alley. Searching for a narrow path around the barricade. A limping stride. His left leg had gone numb below the knee. He moved forward with one hand braced against the wall.
The other hand still at his chest.
Scene 3. Signal Flare
At the bend in the alley, the sound of military boots.
Two pairs. Steady cadence. Patrol. Lee Kang pressed his body into the shadow of the wall. The black of his coat blended with the darkness. He stopped breathing. His ribs protested, but he swallowed it.
Two patrolmen appeared at the alley entrance.
Walking side by side, rifles slung over their shoulders. One held a flashlight. The beam swept the wall. The opposite side from where Lee Kang stood. It had not yet reached this far.
Lee Kang's right hand moved.
He picked up a brick fragment at his feet. Slightly smaller than a fist. Sharp-edged. His fingers measured its weight. Distance: four strides. The front one's neck first. When the flashlight drops, darkness returns. In that darkness, the rear one's neck.
Two and done.
Lee Kang's knees bent halfway. Ready to spring.
Then he heard a sound.
Not from beyond the alley. Much farther. From the direction of the Gyeongseong Station plaza. Human shouting. Not one voice but many, erupting simultaneously. Lee Kang's ears caught it.
"Tsukamaero!" Seize them!
Japanese. A military policeman's bark.
"Tsukamaero—nogasu na!" Seize them—don't let them escape!
The sound of military boots pounding tile followed. Multiple pairs. From the barricade toward the plaza. The two patrolmen in front of Lee Kang also stopped and turned toward the plaza.
Lee Kang's gaze went past the alley's end to the plaza beyond.
The searchlights converged in one direction. The center of the plaza. At the point where the beams overlapped, a human silhouette was visible. A young body breaking through the crowd. Having vaulted over the barricade. A hooded face. Laborer's clothes. In that hand—
A black lump of iron.
Lee Kang's eyes narrowed.
The young man drew it from inside his coat. The size of two fists. A fuse was attached. The tip of the fuse was lit. A short flame wavered in the night air.
The plaza froze.
One beat. A stillness like the world's power being cut settled over everything. The crowd's screams, the military police's shouts, the dogs' barking—all of it swallowed. The young man's arm cocked back.
"Daehan dongnip—" Long live Korean independence—
The young man's voice crossed the plaza. A young voice. Cracked. Fear and resolve carried in it at the same time.
"Manse!"
The arm swung forward.
The two patrolmen in front of Lee Kang abandoned the alley and ran. Toward the plaza. The flashlight hit the ground. Its beam rolled and stopped.
The brick lowered from Lee Kang's hand.
He set it down quietly.
The patrolmen's backs vanished past the alley's end. Out of Lee Kang's field of vision.
Lee Kang leaned against the alley wall and watched the plaza.
The black lump of iron left the young man's hand. It turned once in the air. Caught the searchlight's beam and flashed briefly.
Lee Kang's jaw clenched once. Clack.
No saliva pooled in his mouth. What pooled was something else. Recognition. Calculation.
When that thing detonated, there would be blood. A great deal of blood. In every direction. People would scream. The military police would converge on the plaza. The barricade would thin. The searchlights would lock onto one direction.
The opposite side would go dark.
Lee Kang's back left the wall. The pain was still there. Still there, but something else had climbed on top of it.
The path opens.
Scene 4. A Noisy Night
The iron lump struck a carriage.
Lee Kang did not see the moment. He did not need to. He felt it.
The air changed first. All the air in the plaza sucked inward at once. The wind reversed all the way to the alley where Lee Kang stood. His coattail flapped as though pulled toward the plaza.
Then it detonated.
Not a sound. A wall. A wall made of sound struck Lee Kang's eardrums. The sensation of something tearing again inside his ears. The world sank below the surface. Sound vanished from Lee Kang's ears, leaving only a muffled ringing.
His vision remained.
The plaza was burning. Flames rose from where the carriage had been. Wreckage scattered in every direction. Wooden splinters. Wheel spokes. And other things. Things that had once been parts of people. Uniform cloth. Leather gloves. What had been inside them. Shapeless things fell, slid, and tumbled across the plaza tiles.
He could not hear the screams. His ears were dead. But he could see the shapes of mouths screaming. The crowd was scattering. The military police were running toward the plaza. Abandoning the barricade. The searchlights locked onto the plaza's center.
Exactly as Lee Kang had predicted.
The opposite side went dark.
Lee Kang moved.
Out of the alley. Onto the main road. Toward the side where the light had vanished. He walked along the left wall. No limp. He could not limp. A limp would draw attention. His legs ignored the numbness below the knee and moved at an even stride.
He passed alongside the barricade.
The far edge of the barrier tangled with wooden stakes and wire. The military policeman who had been guarding it had already run toward the plaza. A rifle leaned against a stake. Left behind by its owner. Lee Kang did not look at the rifle. He passed it.
He crossed the barricade.
The motion of climbing over split the wounds on his back. A line of blood ran out from under his coat and fell onto the barricade's wood. Lee Kang did not feel it. He chose not to.
The road beyond the barricade was empty. Everyone had either run toward the plaza or hidden indoors. Empty road. Empty darkness. Lee Kang's feet stepped onto that darkness.
Wind blew.
From behind him. From the plaza. Hot wind pushed by the flames. Something rode that wind. It struck the front of Lee Kang's coat. Light and thin. Paper. Lee Kang's stride slowed by one beat.
A sheet of paper had caught on the front of his coat.
A leaflet.
Characters printed in black ink crowded the surface. What entered Lee Kang's vision was the top line. Large text. Some of the ink had bled, but it was legible.
Declaration of Korean Independence
Lee Kang's left hand caught the leaflet.
Not to read it. Because the paper flapping against his coat would catch the eye. His hand crumpled the paper. One-handed. It balled into a wad inside his fist. He dropped it to the ground.
The paper ball fell onto the tile and rolled to a stop.
Lee Kang did not look back.
The smell of blood was pushing in from the direction of the plaza. Mixed with gunpowder and burning flesh—a thick, acrid reek of blood. Lee Kang's nose flared once. Saliva started to pool at the root of his tongue, then stopped. His jaw tightened on its own.
That blood was not blood to eat.
Not blood that needed eating. It was human blood. Blood shed for a homeland. Lee Kang's brain did not classify it that way. The circuit capable of such classification had already shut down. His body simply did not respond. No saliva pooled. His jaw did not open. It was not that instinct rejected the blood—it was that the canteen against his chest was absorbing every last drop of his appetite.
Because the canteen was there.
Because Yeonhwa was there.
No other blood was needed.
Lee Kang walked. The plaza's flames grew smaller behind him. The screams grew distant. His hearing was returning by degrees. Between the muffled ringing, the sound of sirens seeped in. Fire trucks or military vehicles—he could not tell. It did not matter.
Lee Kang's feet turned into an alley leading away from Gyeongseong Station.
Darkness swallowed him.
The light from behind cast a long shadow on the alley wall. Lee Kang's shadow stretched and warped across the brick. One shoulder drooped. His back was hunched. One arm folded against his chest. When that shadow turned the corner, Lee Kang's lips moved.
"Noisy night."
One sentence. A dry voice threaded with iron. His back torn and bleeding, ribs grinding bone on bone, the historic tragedy of his nation's fate unfolding behind him—and from that mouth, one sentence.
Lee Kang walked into the alley's darkness. The canteen inside his coat tapped his chest in time with his steps. Dully. Dully. Over his heart.
The flames from the Gyeongseong Station plaza stained the night sky red. Scattered leaflets caught the firelight and drifted apart like butterflies. Screams and boot-steps and sirens tore Gyeongseong's night to shreds.
Lee Kang's shadow vanished at the alley's end.
Only the canteen cradled to his chest caught the light once and gleamed, cold.