CHAPTER 3: Memory of White Shoes

1. The Crimson Sprint and Diverging Visions

Inside the car, a brutal, bone-rattling beat erupted from the speakers, utterly swallowing the roar of the road. On the surface, it was a sprint of unparalleled luxury and flash, but to Seung-hwa, buried deep within the passenger seat, it was all merely fragments of empty noise shattering into the void. To a man whose heart had completely frozen over, the searing heat of the city was a season belonging entirely to others—one that would never touch him.

Behind the wheel, Yubin radiated a dazzling beauty that made her thirty years of age completely irrelevant. Her long, black hair, rippling freely along the contours of the wind, looked like the only wings of freedom permitted in this wretched world. Yet, beneath that flamboyant exterior that seemed to savor the speed, the profile of her face caught behind her dark sunglasses was steeped in a chill that froze one to the bone. It was the sharp edge of a woman who had tempered herself like steel to survive the brutal landscapes of noir. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel with crushing force; but it was less a gesture to control the vehicle, and more a desperate attempt to suppress a sudden surge of emotion welling up from the deepest trenches of her chest.

Through the bottom of her sunglasses, Yubin quietly stole a glance at the vacant light pooling in Seung-hwa’s eyes as he stared at the blurred scenery rushing past the window. Though she was a woman who had lived savagely, constantly crossing the thresholds of death, her heart still ached with a dull, throbbing pain whenever she looked at the blood-stained scars etched into Seung-hwa’s back and the guilt slowly eating away at his soul. She possessed the fierce resolve to pull the trigger at a moment's notice to protect him, yet the utter helplessness of being unable to wipe away the tears he wept during his nightly torments remained a burden she had to bear alone.

Yubin silently pressed down on the accelerator. The magnificent roar of the engine shook the atmosphere once more. Under the blazing sun, the red convertible charged relentlessly forward, carving a crimson trajectory through the city.

"Babe."

Yubin’s low, soft call, slicing through the deafening exhaust and the crashing music, scattered futility into the shimmering heat waves of the asphalt. Sitting in the passenger seat, Seung-hwa didn't even pretend to hear. His gaze was thoroughly chained to the pedestrians hurrying past on the sidewalk, as though his entire soul had been mortgaged to an ancient phantom.

이어서 두 사람의 갈등이 깊어지는 대화와 낡은 양화점 앞의 운명적인 순간까지, 하드보일드 누아르의 비정함과 두 사람의 애틋한 서정성이 돋보이도록 영문으로 번역했습니다.

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White knuckles strained against the steering wheel as Yubin gripped it with newfound intensity. She was a woman who had survived the savage world of brutal men without shedding a single tear, eventually rising to the ranks of the legendary 'Firebird'—yet, whenever she looked at Seung-hwa slowly withering away beside her, it felt as though the deepest chambers of her heart were scorching into black ash.

Yubin was a fierce, formidable woman, strong enough to wage war against the entire world if it meant protecting this man—the only one who had ever allowed her to feel a flicker of human warmth amidst the pitch-black darkness. Yet, no matter how powerful her hands were, she could not grasp the elusive heart of Seung-hwa, who lived like a ghost in the city, forever preserving himself within the hell of his past.

"Since the mood is so heavy, what do you say we grab a glass of soju before heading back? It's been a while."

At Yubin’s suggestion, Seung-hwa didn’t even turn his head, replying with cold bluntness.

"To people like us, alcohol is nothing but poison."

"Still, when you feel this utterly miserable, shouldn't you at least wash it down with a drink to let it go?"

At Yubin's persistence, Seung-hwa’s voice grew a shade sharper.

"If this is too difficult for you, I’ll move alone from now on."

Stung by his icy, dismissive tone, Yubin finally brought the car to a temporary halt and stared at him head-on.

"Seung-hwa, let’s stop this. Let’s put this life behind us once and for all. We’ve made more than enough money by now. Is this all still because of the promise to your little sister? We have enough wealth now..."

Despite Yubin’s desperate pleading, Seung-hwa merely mumbled a low, hollow apology.

It was at that exact microsecond. Past the window of the crimson convertible as it resumed its relentless sprint, a decrepit shoemaker’s shop—caked in the grimy tarnish of time—swept into view. Standing frozen before the dust-laden display window was the fragile, solitary silhouette of a young girl’s back, looking entirely out of place in this colossal, gray metropolis.

The moment the gaunt shoulders of the girl, who looked barely ten years old, and the silhouette of her faded clothes brushed against Seung-hwa’s retina, his heart began to violently throb as if it would explode. Over that tiny silhouette, someone from his memories—someone he had never forgotten for a single second over the past fifteen years, crying with a broken piece of glass in her hand on that stench-ridden rural kitchen floor—was transparently overlaid. It was Yeong-ae. It was undeniably his sister, Yeong-ae.

"Stop! Pull over, Yubin!"

Seung-hwa’s sharp scream, entirely stripped of his usual composure, instantly tore through the harsh music playing inside the car. His voice was a volatile mixture of the lifelong guilt that had crushed him, and a blind madness whispering that this might be the last lifeline thrown to him by God.

At the sudden shriek, Yubin’s hands on the steering wheel tensed and hardened by reflex. Seung-hwa threw his body forward as if he would fling the door open even before the vehicle could fully halt. His two eyes were already frantically locked onto the fading display window of the shoemaker's shop in the distance, and the back of the young soul standing right before it. A beast-like cry—that he could never lose her again, and that if he missed her this time, he would truly have to live in hell forever—echoed wretchedly over the crimson roadway.

Screeech—!

It was even before the car could come to a complete stop, accompanied by the deafening roar of tires grinding into the asphalt. Seung-hwa burst through the door. His body was already moving under the absolute command of memory, transcending all reason. Crossing the pavement shimmering with heat waves in a single breath, Seung-hwa roughly snatched the child’s shoulder as if grasping for the final lifeline above a precipice. His grip was so intensely fierce that his fingers threatened to dig straight into her frail collarbone.

"Yeong-ae…! It’s you, isn’t it? It’s your brother, Yeong-ae!"

The voice of the man, once as unyielding as a great mountain, shattered into tiny, fragile pieces like a child's. It was the exact moment the blood-stained scream that had pooled inside his chest for fifteen years erupted all at once. The worn glass of the shoemaker’s shop seemed to tremble violently under the weight of his ragged breath.

The rounded eyes of the child who turned around looked up at Seung-hwa, paralyzed with stark terror. Confronted by the rough touch and the madness-tinged glare of a strange man, the child froze completely, unable to even catch her breath.

Yet, even before Seung-hwa’s frantic breath could fully reach her, the man’s entire world collapsed as futilely as a castle of sand. Revealed beneath the dim, faint glow of the display window, the child’s face did not possess the eyes of the sister he had yearned for every single night while weeping tears of blood. It wasn't Yeong-ae. She was merely an nameless, innocent soul—the kind found anywhere in the world—who had simply been passing the time, looking at the old shoes.

With a blank, hollow expression like a patient whose anesthesia had suddenly worn off, Seung-hwa slowly pulled his hands away from the child’s shoulders. His two hands, dropping powerlessly, trembled faintly in the empty air, having lost their destination.

The brutal stretch of fifteen long years had willfully distorted the image of Yeong-ae’s face etched inside his mind, and the yearning deeply carved into his chest had silently transformed into a cruel sickness eating away at his reason, tearing him down in real time.

"Seung-hwa..."

Yubin, who had parked the car and approached before he knew it, quietly wrapped her arms around his shivering shoulders from behind. Seeing the spine of the man—once as unyielding as cold steel—completely shattered, Yubin bit her lower lip, swallowing the tears that threatened to spill over. She possessed the fierce strength to halt his madness, yet the harsh reality that she could never cure this agonizing sickness of yearning pierced her heart like an awl.

Beyond the display window of the shoemaker's shop, the sun was gradually sinking, and the urban sunset, bleeding into the sky, cast the shadow of the lost killer agonizingly long and desolate across the dark asphalt.

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