Chương 19: S.04 Memory of the Clock 04(04)

Scene 12_02. Ju-hee: Ah, by the way. The Envoy. How does one break it, though? I don't know that one. The finger that had been flicking was gone, severed. It had been a moment without a single sign. As Ju-hee, startled, watched the Black Water drip from her hand, then slowly lifted her gaze and looked at Si-yeon — Si-yeon was already at her nose. Ju-hee did not even have room for bewilderment. Si-yeon, her two eyes drained empty, was savoring Ju-hee's fear.

Ju-hee's severed fingers only streamed Black Water; they did not return. She was trembling. She had not expected to run into the Envoy the moment she rose above the surface. No — she had known, but she had not known it was a thing to be feared to this degree. It was a terror she had felt for the first time. While Ju-hee just stood and looked at Si-yeon, Si-yeon's hand rose slowly and passed Ju-hee's stomach. Not passing over it. Going right through it. Ju-hee had no room even to flinch.

Ju-hee's black-stained entrails were there, cradled in Si-yeon's fine hand. Si-yeon (The Weeping of Retribution): Shall I, tell you, how, to break it. Si-yeon's small voice was horrifyingly composed and clear. A terror too great to feel as pain. At the terror felt right at her nose, Ju-hee felt that shattering here and now would rather be the one, fastest way to end it. Carefully she lifted the hand running across Ju-hee's stomach.

Ju-hee, dangling from Si-yeon's hand itself, was lifted high and swung limp like a torn stuffed doll. Every limb trembled. Si-yeon gripped Ju-hee's neck with the other hand and slowly withdrew the hand that had pierced her stomach. The wound where her stomach yawned open — the dead, rushing in, could not even seal it. She flung Ju-hee far. Like a torn stuffed doll flung limp to land in a trash bin, Ju-hee's body tumbled into a nearby recycling bin. Si-yeon walked over slowly.

Ju-hee, paralyzed with terror, could not even rise. She could not even think to hold her gaping stomach. She took it as only a matter left of shattering. What had been said earlier was by now pitch-black and forgotten. The moment Si-yeon's step faltered, Ju-hee finally began to come back to herself. Si-yeon had no reserve left. To bear the greatest death in a human body was too much. Si-yeon's step settled onto the snow.

The pupils that had been stained black fled in an instant as the Black Water path drained out of them, and they returned to their original form. Si-yeon: Ah, SSibal. Seriously. Come on. Not now. With that curt mutter as her last, Si-yeon collapsed limp onto the frozen snow. So-hui tried to wring out what strength remained to reach the fallen Si-yeon, but they would not leave her be.

Jeong-hyeon drew a bundle of 금줄 (Geumjul_Ritual Taboo Rope to suppress power) from her pocket, pulled So-hui upright into a seat, and wound the Ritual Taboo Rope over So-hui's slender wrists. Su-jeong, her neck snapped, unable even to right her head twisted to some strange angle, staggered forward in a lurching gait. So-hui, now prostrated bound in the snow-field, strained with all her might to block the slow, lurching advance of Su-jeong.

Su-jeong seized the hair of the fallen Si-yeon and lifted the unconscious Si-yeon up whole. With her head cocked and her gaze twisted by it, Su-jeong gave her cue, and burst her own body, pouring out Black Water. As the hand of Su-jeong that had gripped Si-yeon's hair faded, Si-yeon dropped, powerless, into the pooled deep of Black Water that had welled up. Scene 13. So-hui slowly opened her eyes. When she looked around, nothing could be seen.

Her eyes had opened, but the pitch-black darkness was blocking So-hui's field of vision. Flustered, she could feel no presence. Only her own pain and wounds pressed on her. A scythe, half-stained black, was lodged in So-hui's shoulder. Every time she tried to move to break free, blood flowed along with the pain. So-hui tried to curl up, but her two hands bound behind to the chair were restricting her movement severely.

While So-hui sat unable to steady her body against the deep pain, some unfamiliar presence came in, circled around to So-hui's back, and switched on the lamp. A glare of light poured in. The place So-hui had opened her eyes in was her own home. Having lost consciousness outside, her whole body was frozen through. While she shivered in pain and cold, Ju-hee peeked her face out in front of So-hui and offered a familiar sneer. Ju-hee: Oh my. SSibal, you got fucked up good, didn't you. Hold on a second.

Ju-hee drew an office stapler out of her outer coat. She gripped So-hui's thrashing body whole and then yanked the scythe out of her shoulder. From the puncture, blood spilled. Unable to hold back the massive pain, So-hui screamed, but in So-hui's home there was no one present. Over So-hui's smooth skin, Ju-hee clacked the stapler's guide-track, driving staples down. As So-hui could not endure the gruesome pain and screamed, Ju-hee, as if unwilling to listen, crumpled her brow and looked around.

She drew a piece of clothing from the laundry bin nearby, then forced So-hui's mouth open and shoved the cloth deep inside. With the cloth crammed in to the point of gagging, So-hui could no longer breathe properly, and only then did Ju-hee seem to find it to her liking. She stroked So-hui's face, then lifted the stapler again above the torn wound and stapled the flesh shut without mercy. Each time So-hui twisted her body, blood seeped from the deep wound.

The staple pins driven into the flesh sealed So-hui's wound for the time being, by makeshift. So-hui, trying to steady herself against the ghastly pain, pressed ragged breaths through the cloth in her mouth, but with the pain still lingering, her body kept trembling on its own. So-hui did not say a word. In the depths of her, fear welled. What followed was a sense of her own lowliness.

Compared to Ji-young and Si-yeon and Yeon-hui, who had borne pains far worse than all of this, her being afraid over only this much felt lowly. She put strength into her bound hands, held hatred, but there was nothing So-hui — who took herself as lowly — could do. Ju-hee whispered into So-hui's ear. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Ju-hee: You're the Guide, right? So guess.

What I'm going to — Ju-hee drew a small box of needles from her breast and held it up. At the sight of it, So-hui's body began to tremble despite itself. Ju-hee: Do now. Scene 14. Where they were being hauled off to was not something she could even guess. But she did not wish to guess either. The fact that every bit of this whole situation felt not unfamiliar to her — that was, for Si-yeon, the greatest problem. The situations were slightly different, but her memory, in some measure, sat close alongside them.

She did not know when she had been through it. Nor did she know why her memory was so familiar and so unfamiliar at once. She thought that once they got her somewhere and tore her apart, that would be the end, but she did not want to die. Buried among the menacing people, as the van she was in headed toward an unfamiliar place, a thought of wanting to live began to take strong root in Si-yeon's head. Only then did tension and dread. Fear crowd in all at once. Retracing memory was hard.

A blind wish to live began to dominate. Seong-hyeon, sitting right beside Si-yeon, saw Si-yeon's breath starting to roughen, and without warning lifted her leg and struck in the face the person seated across from her. Blood sprayed up. Seong-hyeon, who had been bound, had somehow, now, two hands perfectly free, and flung them about, casting white paper throughout the van. The throats of the people who had been carting Seong-hyeon and Si-yeon off somewhere were in an instant cut, their heads rolling to the floor.

Dashing over to the driver's seat, Seong-hyeon righted the swaying vehicle and pulled it over onto the shoulder. Drenched in blood, Seong-hyeon came back again to Si-yeon, who was likewise drenched in blood. She untied Si-yeon's two hands in haste, from the blank-faced Si-yeon who could not even cry out, then knelt before Si-yeon. Seong-hyeon: The Oldest. Kang Ji-young The Oldest. With a blank gaze Si-yeon turned a hesitant line of sight toward Seong-hyeon, who had called her by that name.

Ji-young, at Seong-hyeon's calling, could say nothing. Even at Seong-hyeon's urgent voice, Ji-young could not offer any reaction. Seong-hyeon drew out the seatbelt, stained thickly with blood, and fastened it across Ji-young's waist. Seong-hyeon: It'll shake a bit. Hold on. Seong-hyeon toppled the corpses around Ji-young aside, then passed back to the front seat and drove the van, engine still running. Ji-young's gaze began to waver. Scene 15_01.

Because people cared for you, did you really think you'd become a precious thing? You can't even play, you don't even know how to take responsibility. What do you actually do? If you're stupid, where on earth would there be any use for you. You should have just stuck to drumming up customers, like you always did. You should have taken more of my misfortune. You're a mirror, aren't you. I don't want to suffer. I want you to be more miserable. Pity. If only you'd been at least a bit good-hearted.

You only know how to tease; you don't know how to see others. How much have I even seen of you, for me to become your mother. I'm sorry. But you — you were nothing. I said I hoped it wouldn't be that way. That — was not said to you. That was what I said, to myself. From the depths sinking down numbingly, Black Water lodged to the very tip of the lungs — so much that not one bubble of air could be pushed out — hurled every kind of recrimination into Si-yeon's head.

Where this was, what it was that was speaking to her — she did not even wish to wonder. Familiar feelings and their familiar opposites only, she felt; and the worries and dreads or misunderstandings that had sat deep within Si-yeon flowed in as though they were fact. Intent and meaning passed by, grazing like braille, striking Si-yeon's head like a flickering lamp, gradually overtaking her.

Like a broken incandescent bulb flashing like braille for a long while, recrimination deep enough to hurt the eyes of Si-yeon, who could see nothing, poured down to the bottom of her chest in various voices. The blade she carried sensed the danger, and without any command or dance at all roused a Black Water path from the hand of Si-yeon, who was sinking endlessly in the Black Water. Black Water was scattered all around, but the Black Water Si-yeon herself bore was a far more ghastly and dangerous thing.

Around Si-yeon, whose consciousness was being steadily submerged in the mingled awareness, from the black blade the loosened black blade-edges whirled. But with only a one-direction blade-edge, she could not properly fend off all the 사념(Sa-nyeom_Death-Thoughts). The Black Water blocked the black shadows that approached Si-yeon, who had lost consciousness holding Black Water within her, but without Si-yeon's will, it was a futile swing of the blade unable properly to hold them back.

The recrimination crowding into Si-yeon's head pressed into it endlessly. To protect Si-yeon properly, Si-yeon's will was needed. The blade slung across her feeble hand suddenly reversed, pushed back the other way, and pricked lightly into the nape of Si-yeon's neck. The blade, which had not bitten deep, tried to wake Si-yeon. The Black Water Si-yeon bore spread out through the less-dense Black Water path.

Sensing the weight, the recrimination that had been weighing on Si-yeon took hold of her faster than anyone had expected. Si-yeon had opened her eyes with effort, but did not push back the crowding recrimination. She thought it all to be her own fault. It was the state of feeling and body of a wreck, barely awakened.

With no power or will left to resist further, she closed her eyes as though giving up — and at that moment, from the Black Water path, countless clinging hands surfaced and were formed, and they seized hold of Si-yeon's whole body — which was being swallowed by Black Water as though fluttering — and began to drag her down with force.

The Black Water path that had circled around the blade tried to keep Si-yeon safe to the end, but the Black Water around the blade, which now held Si-yeon's resignation, kept growing duller. Like a drifting thing in Black Water, the blade, showing not a flicker of movement, remained around Si-yeon like debris floating on a sea. Si-yeon, being drawn to the deepest depth of the Black Water, began to feel a ghastly reek. On every side, the red of death could be felt.

Only the Black Water, in which nothing could still be seen, filled her surroundings, but to Si-yeon — who bore the water over her whole body and could not even draw breath — a familiar reek reached her nose. The smell of blood. Si-yeon, who had been dragged along with her eyes closed in resignation, began to open her eyes little by little.

Like a moth to a flame, Si-yeon, who was being dragged along limply without so much as glancing at the many black hands lunging at her living body with iron grip, opened her eyes with effort at the smell of blood she had sensed. From some distance, she saw a corpse that recrimination had shaped — Ju-hee — torturing So-hui. Si-yeon, who had opened her eyes with effort, took on in an instant a helplessness, a self-reproach, a hatred she could not bear. She needed help.

Ju-hee, her gaze fixed intently on Si-yeon who sat beyond the Black Water path, began to cut off So-hui's head. She confirmed Ju-hee killing So-hui effortlessly, without putting forth a single bit of strength. She tried to stop her by whatever means, but at a sight that unfolded too swiftly, Si-yeon — without even thinking to pry off the black grasping hands that held her — only looked out at the far distance with a blank gaze. This is how it became — because you were dwelling here.

Before Si-yeon knew it, Su-jeong had come to sit beside her; with a blank gaze, bearing no hatred, she let her lips stir beside Si-yeon's eyelid. It did not come in as sound. But it could be felt. She was mocking her, so that Si-yeon would come apart. For that reason Si-yeon slowly began to gather back the pupils she had let empty. Si-yeon's will passed to the head of Su-jeong, who had been looking pitifully at Si-yeon and jeering.

Si-yeon turned her head slowly and looked squarely — with precision — at Su-jeong, who had been whispering near Si-yeon's ear. Into Si-yeon's bound body, which had not an ounce of vigor and felt languid, a firm, hardened strength entered. Si-yeon: You SSibal bitch.