CHAPTER 2: The White Punisher

Around 4:00 AM on a certain dawn in 2001. In the space where the city's precarious noises had ebbed away like the tide, a fishy stench of death welled up thick, like a heavy fog. Breaking this cruel silence was a sharp, distinct rupture tearing through the waves of air—the sound of a single gunfire: Bang.

While Yubin stood like a phantom in the chilling darkness of the villa’s hallway, keeping a vigilant watch in all directions, Seung-hwa slipped soundlessly through the cracked-open door into the bedroom. Atop the bed, swathed in deep shadows, the dregs of greed and excretion tangled together, giving off a sickening odor. It was at that exact microsecond, sensing a flash of presence, that the man snapped his eyes open. Feeling the looming threat, the man lunged his hand beneath the pillow. His movement was as agile as a beast cornered with murderous intent, yet it was still a step behind the neural reflex of Seung-hwa’s index finger pulling the trigger.

A gunfire, drier than the downpour of the dawn rain violently lashing against the windowpane, struck the eardrums inside the cramped bedroom.

A precise, crimson hole was punched right between the man's brows. As a fleeting spasm rippled through his muscles and passed, the shadow of death settled down as heavy as lead. It was an absolute, mechanical, and transparent execution—one that did not even permit a single scream.

Before the blood splatters in the bedroom could even cool, the narrative immediately shifted onto the dawn roadway. The ensuing assassination was just as flawlessly seamless, executed without a single millimeter of error. The bosses of the massive syndicate never even got to know why they had to collapse onto the freezing asphalt; they simply had to exhale the final, futile breaths of their lives onto the rain-slicked pavement. That dawn of 2001 was a time of ghosts, where the entire landscape of a colossal power structure shifted completely without a single rumor or sound.

"God was silent, but the Devil gave me a clear answer. That to live, I must kill... That to feed myself even a warm piece of bread in this living hell, I must trample over someone else..."

Crimson Asphalt (A Six-Lane Road, Dawn)

The city at 4:00 AM resembled a colossal concrete tomb. Draped in a bruised, bluish darkness, the six-lane roadway lay submerged in a bizarre silence that made its vast width feel eerie and suffocating. It was a silence ruthlessly torn to shreds by a piercing shriek.

Screeech—!

A massive black sedan slammed on its brakes, crying out in mechanical agony. The sickening, acrid stench of burning rubber bled sharply into the freezing dawn air. Cutting off the sedan’s path was a crimson convertible, its engine letting out a low, predatory rumble. The door of the convertible swung open, and Seung-hwa stepped calmly onto the asphalt. Thirty-year-old Seung-hwa. Having crossed through the deepest trenches of a living hell, the man’s gaze was sunk in a stillness colder than the morning mist.

The doors of the shadow-drenched sedan flew open, and two syndicate thugs burst out, radiating raw, murderous intent. Brandishing weapons from their jackets, their movements were savage and fast. Yet, through Seung-hwa’s dry, hollow eyes, those dynamic bodies were nothing more than moving lumps of flesh caught in his crosshairs. Unmoved by emotion, untouched by hesitation, his finger pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang!

Two flashes of muzzle fire ripped through the curtain of dawn. Without a millimeter of error, the 9mm rounds pierced the chest and forehead of the two men. Without even the grace of a scream, they collapsed awkwardly onto the freezing asphalt—a death as utterly powerless as roadside game.

Seung-hwa’s gaze shifted immediately to the rear seat of the sedan.

Inside, the boss—who had been drunkenly burying his head in a young woman's lap—snapped his head up, startled by the thunderous gunfire. The alcohol evaporated from his system in an instant as his eyes turned stark white with terror. In the microsecond that Seung-hwa’s icy glare locked onto the boss's eyes through the tinted windowpane, Seung-hwa’s forearm recoiled with an effortless kick.

Bang—!

The reinforced glass shattered into thousands of diamond-like particles, violently erupting outward. As those fleeting shards caught the faint light and flashed, a fountain of crimson blood erupted, soaking the luxury leather seats in a deep, dark maroon. The fishy gore spraying from the man's fractured skull mingled with the glass fragments, painting a bizarre, horrific pattern across the leather upholstery.

The woman’s piercing shriek filled the interior of the sedan, but Seung-hwa had already turned his back. The dawn silence—one that would never truly bring peace—settled heavily once more over the blood-stained, six-lane road.

제6장의 처절하고 종교적인 자학 묘사, 그리고 승화의 깊은 내면적 절망이 담긴 지하실 장면을 영문 소설 버전으로 번역 및 편집해 드립니다. 하드보일드 누아르 특유의 묵직하고 서늘한 문체를 살려 번역했습니다.

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 The Sanctuary of Shadows (A Basement, Dead of Night)

The underground space, thick with the damp stench of ruin, resembled the deepest trench of hell. Amidst the heavy, suffocating silence, the grand, solemn notes of a pipe organ drifted from somewhere like a haunting hallucination. The melody of the cathedral choir bled through the humid, stagnant air of the basement. A few flickering candles barely pushed back the encroaching shadows. Within that trembling light stood a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary cradling her child. The eyes of the cracked, stained statue were terrifyingly indifferent, yet they looked down upon Seung-hwa with a gaze that was brutally pitiful.

At the feet of this sacred image lay an object of jarring dissonance—a blood-stained duffel bag stuffed with cash, the price of hacking away another human life on the road just moments ago. Resting with its black zipper gaped open, spilling crisp, freshly minted bills, the bag seemed to openly mock a world where the mercy of God could be bought and sold for a few pieces of paper.

Seung-hwa ruthlessly ripped off his cumbersome upper garments, reeking of raw copper and acrid gunpowder. His exposed back was a mangled canvas, a hideous knot of old scars and freshly torn tissue. He snatched up a worn leather gag rolling across the floor and bit down on it so hard his teeth threatened to shatter. Then, the thick rope whip clenched in his right hand sliced through the empty air. A rope coarser than hide tore through the midnight air, detonating mercilessly against Seung-hwa’s spine.

Crack—!

With a brutal rupture, flesh was instantly shredded and torn away. Searing crimson blood pierced through his calluses, spraying like a fountain across the surrounding cement walls where the candle flames danced. Following the impact, he felt the vivid, visceral sensation of a thick, hot liquid tracking down his tensely braced back.

An agonizing pain, like thousands of razor-sharp needles plunging into him simultaneously, surged through his neural pathways and struck his brain. Yet, at that exact microsecond, an paradoxically pure and sweet sense of liberation washed over the deep creases of Seung-hwa’s brow.

"Only when I feel this agony do I brand upon myself the truth that I am still human. Therefore, this torment is to me like a single streak of light in the pitch-black darkness."

Seung-hwa had realized long ago that no matter how many times he chanted the name of God and clawed at his chest, he would never reach anything resembling salvation. His God had already died fifteen years ago on that stench-ridden rural kitchen floor, trampled beneath his stepfather's heavy boots.

The heavens had discarded him like refuse; humanity had shunned him like filth. It was never the mercy of God that grabbed the dying boy by the collar and dragged him into the brutal arenas of survival to feed and raise him. It was solely the hand of the Devil, holding its breath in the deepest shadows.

Thus, the boy was reborn as a monster—the "White Killer."

As the flagellation repeated, the blood streaming from his back mingled with the damp dust on the floor, soon pooling into a thick, dark reservoir of gore beneath his feet. By the time the auditory hallucination of the pipe organ filling the space began to fade, the plaster statue of the Virgin Mary still held no answer, no promise of redemption in her pale eyes. She merely looked down, in absolute silence, upon the crimson hell below.