PHUW 110

***

Run!

He shouted.

Ahn Haeri, run!

The voice was more desperate than ever before.

Run!

He was already running. But the command told him to keep running. Run where? Where was this place? He was running down a hard, cold road. The space was filled with blurred pillars, their outlines smudged. When he crashed into them, he was shoved back, then bounced upright again like a roly-poly toy. Strange heads, like soap bubbles made of muddy water, stared at him. They were bystanders. Strangers who had no idea why he was running so desperately.

He pushed through them and ran. Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound of solid objects breaking repeated again and again. The slow-spreading red paint was blood. The scattering white was brain matter. And the one falling was him.

No. Not him. He was running right now.

Run! Or you’ll die!

When he turned, a black figure with a gleaming sashimi knife was hunting him down.

Run. Run!

He tried to board a red bus that had appeared out of nowhere. But no matter how frantically he banged on it, no matter how he screamed to let him in, the doors did not open. The driver, with his muddy-water head, and the passengers in their seats only stared at him with distant eyes.

The black figure with the knife spotted him and charged. He abandoned the bus and tried to climb into the bed of a battered blue truck nearby. Then, suddenly, the small truck turned into a dump truck, lifting its bed. He slid straight down like on a greased slide.

He tried to run anyway. But then one foot betrayed him, he looked down. A chain with a stone weight was wrapped around his ankle. It was impossible to undo. He couldn’t run, and in the end he fell. He scooted back on his rear and lifted his head.

The tip of the sashimi knife reached right in front of his nose.

Thud! Thud! The madman beside him plunged the blade into another man’s belly. The man bent like a cooked shrimp, then sank through the floor and vanished.

Fuck! Why is he chasing me! Why!

He screamed and lashed out. But his whole body would not obey. Even his voice, it turned out, was just a delusion that he was shouting. Something was stuck to his mouth, preventing him from making a sound.

A thin seam appeared on the black figure’s head. It split open into a grin. Filthy teeth showed, and two nostrils formed. Then eye sockets appeared and thinned into slits. The thick flesh of the head gave way, and as the body, clumsy at first glance, split open down the center, white fabric rose up. It became a shirt. The black silhouette sharpened, turning into a shabby black suit like something worn at a funeral.

The vague black figure became a man with a vicious expression. The others too. They all had different faces, but they all wore the same clothes.

Crack.

Something broke again. The spreading blood blurred and scattered, and from it a red brick building rose. Floor by floor, it stacked upward until it was an old five-story villa, with the ground floor an open piloti parking lot. On the fourth floor, someone hung from a dilapidated window frame.

Run!

His inner voice shouted. But this time it sounded a little different from before.

Call the cops!

This time it was someone else’s voice entirely.

Ahn Haeri!

It was a voice he knew for certain.

Useless Ahn Haeri, you bastard!

Someone who had been at his side since he was very young had called him that. Useless Ahn Haeri. Idiot. It was an insult, but it hadn’t really hurt. He had called that person something similar too. Maybe it was something like that.

Fucking Sangjin, you bastard.

That was when it happened. The person dangling dangerously from the fourth-floor window turned into Sangjin. He grinned at Haeri. That mischievous expression he always wore whenever he was about to cause trouble. Haeri unconsciously smiled back.

Sangjin came straight toward him. Still hanging perilously off the fourth-floor railing, but instead of his legs, his head was pointing downward. He descended in slow motion, one-quarter speed. His skull hit the ground, flattening bluntly, then burst and scattered everywhere.

Ruuun.

His voice was low and drawn out. But Haeri’s feet would not move. They only shook violently as though an earthquake had struck. The chain on his ankle clanged in protest, or perhaps it was his own scream.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Men in black suits, holding sharp sashimi knives, came charging toward him. The world shook. And so did Haeri.

‘Haeri.’

A strange voice called him.

‘Ahn Haeri. Come here.’

Who? Where to?

‘Come to hyung.’

Who? Who are you?

‘Hyung is waiting.’

He had no hyung. The only ones he could call family were his grandmother, who had died when he was a child, and his mother, who had left when he was even younger. He had no hyung.

Who are you to call me? If you’re going to call me, then save me. Fuck. I’m scared to death. Lee Sangjin, they killed him. Those bastards killed Sangjin, my only friend. So even if I don’t know who you are, if you’re going to help me, then help me now. Save me!

He screamed. By then the men in front of him were swinging their sashimi knives.

“Aaagh!”

He shrieked and flung up his arm. The blade slid across his forearm, hot blood spilled with a searing pain. His whole body shook uncontrollably. Then the black figure lunged at him.

Beeeep.

The high-pitched signal continued. Then the world went dark. His body fell into something like a sticky cesspit. It was heavy, hot, and painful. Black, burning liquid surged into his nose and throat. He could not breathe.

At this rate, he would die.

Why? Why did he have to die? Why did Sangjin have to die? They had lived as best they could. Even when abandoned by their parents, even when society pointed fingers at them. They had lived desperately together. So why did they have to die so unfairly? Why? What had they done so wrong?

He could not die. He would not die. Fuck. He had been born without choice, and now they wanted to kill him without choice? It was unjust. Unjust! He would not die, not like this!

Even while drowning in the hot liquid blocking his airway, he struggled with all his strength. He thrashed his limbs. He fought against the black forms coming from all directions, clawing his way upward. He flailed his heavy legs. He would not die. Haeri reached out his hand.

Something grabbed his wrist. It was a burning hand. His falling body was pulled upward. The heavy black mass clinging to his whole body and dragging him down nearly tore his arm out of its socket. But Haeri grabbed that hand with everything he had. Let his wrist break, let his arm be ruined. It didn’t matter. He could not die like this.

His sinking body began to rise slowly. The black mass hanging on him fell away bit by bit. With each one that dropped, his ascent quickened. When the last black figure clutching his ankle fell off, his body shot upward like a rocket.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The crushing black masses vanished. Instead, damp, cold air covered his body. Noise surrounded him and his head throbbed as if it would split apart. Yet the pale blue and white figures crowding around him kept doing something to him, leaving him no chance to rest. The hand on his wrist belonged to another black figure. Larger than all the others, though black, Haeri didn’t feel scared.

“Haeri.”

So you were the one calling me.

“Are you conscious? Thank goodness. I thought you were going to die.”

You saved me. You pulled me out.

The black figure was soon pushed back by the pale blue-white figures. They did something to his body, but his dulled senses could not tell what exactly.

He did not know what had just happened. He was certain of only two things.

Lee Sangjin was dead. And he himself was alive.

Even through his clouded consciousness, he clearly remembered the faces of the ones who killed Sangjin and chased him.

“Lee… Sangjin is dead.”

“What?”

The white figure froze at whatever they were doing to him.

“Lee Sangjin. He was my friend. He died. He fell from the fourth floor. His head broke. Blood and white… something, it all spilled out.”

“Mr. Ahn Haeri, do you know where you are right now?”

“I don’t know. But Sangjin is dead. I just saw him, right in front of me, blood pouring. Report it… please report it. Sangjin was my friend. We were close. But those people threatened him, and he fell, and he died.”

The white figure stumbled back in confusion. The black figure that had withdrawn took its place again.

“Haeri.”

The voice was rougher and stranger than before. A deep, distorted rumble, like a sound effect, that triggered instinctive fear.

“Did you remember something?”

“Wha… what?”

His heart plummeted, then began pounding madly. Goosebumps prickled down his spine. Sweat dampened his forehead and palms.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The signal quickened. The white figure forced the black one back. Then other figures surrounded him. As the black figure pushed between them, Haeri trembled like a fish flopping on a cutting board.

The black figure froze.