Chapter 2: The Fresh Wound
The sea had always been Hwan's confidant. For forty long years, it had listened; an eternal companion to his joys, his failures, his secrets. Its waves had swallowed his laughter and his tears alike, always returning with the same indifferent hush, as if to say life goes on, no matter what you lose. But tonight, the sea mocked him. The rhythmic slap of water against the pylons below the pier felt like applause for a tragedy, a cruel ovation for a life that had finally collapsed.
Only a few days had passed since the official came. The memory was still fresh; the crisp, starched uniform, the carefully measured words, the bureaucratic detachment in his eyes.
"A catastrophic and sudden blast at the Tango-7 training facility… a critical failure in the experimental reactor core… your son, Dong, was in the adjacent sector. His passing was instantaneous. He served the Federation with honor."
Honor.
The word echoed inside Hwan like a joke he wasn't in on. It didn't fill the suffocating silence of his empty house. It didn't erase the ghost of Dong's laughter that still clung to the walls. It didn't justify why no body had been recovered; too dangerous, they said, too radioactive. All they gave him was a folded flag and a medal that felt as cold as the grave it represented.
And so, he worked. Because if his hands stopped moving, his heart might too.
Beneath the dim, yellow lantern hanging from the stall awning, Hwan's hands carved through routine like a man in a trance. The mackerel in his grip was slick and alive with the memory of the sea; the blade in his other hand was sharp, swift, merciless. Scales scattered like shattered silver under each stroke, and with a deeper cut, the innards slipped free; a glistening mess of life and death in his calloused palms. Once, this had been creation, sustenance. Now it felt like desecration.
His gaze drifted heavy, unfocused down the cobblestone street to the Old Pier Inn. A single yellow square of light burned in an upstairs window. The city boy's room.
He had watched him step off the bus days ago; not with the clumsy walk of a fisherman or the tired shuffle of a merchant, but with the alert, silent grace of a predator. Hwan had offered him a meal, as coastal kindness demanded, and seen suspicion in his eyes. He had dismissed it then as city-born paranoia. Now, he understood it for what it was: the look of a man who had killed before.
The chime of his personal communicator shattered the silence; a sound that pierced deeper than any blade. It was a gift from Dong, once. "So we can always talk, Dad. No matter where I am." He hadn't touched it since the news. Turning it on felt like giving up; admitting that Dong's voice would never fill the line again.
But tonight, something inside him; desperation, maybe made him reach for it.
The screen flickered to life. A single message. Encrypted. Anonymous. Just one video file.
With trembling hands, he pressed play.
The footage was grainy and green, recorded by a low-light security feed. A corridor; sterile, concrete, and cold. Then, a sudden bloom of white light devoured the frame. The camera shook violently. And in that frozen, blinding instant before the feed died, a figure appeared; a young man, features sharp and determined, a heavy duffel slung over his shoulder. He wasn't fleeing. He wasn't terrified. He was looking back at the blast with grim purpose.
The screen refreshed. A second message appeared; the same image, enhanced, sharpened.
It was the city boy.
It was Raiden.
Below it, a single line of text.
[ENCRYPTED SOURCE: JINA-01]
He was there. He caused the blast that killed your son.
The world tilted. The words of the official, the talk of a "reactor malfunction," the empty condolences; all of it shattered in an instant. They had sent a saboteur. They had murdered Dong. And now, that murderer slept a few hundred feet from where his son had once stood.
A sound escaped Hwan; something raw and primal, born of grief and rage twisted into one. The numbness that had weighed him down since Dong's death caught fire, burning into something cold and focused. He saw Dong's smile one last time; and then it was gone, replaced by the image of a man silhouetted against an inferno.
He turned back to his stall. The knives lay where he had left them, lined up like old friends. He ignored the thin fillet blades. Too light. Too gentle. His hand found the cleaver; heavy, brutal, final. It was no longer a tool. It was a sentence.
He didn't extinguish the lantern. Let it burn. Let its warm, welcoming light be the last lie this town told before the truth came calling.
Hwan stepped into the mist-choked night, the cleaver hanging loosely at his side, its polished edge catching the faint moonlight like a whisper of what was to come. The air, once crisp with salt, now tasted of iron and vengeance.
His walk to the inn was slow; not the pace of hesitation, but of inevitability. Each footfall on the wet cobblestones thudded like a funeral drum. The soft drip of rainwater from a torn tarp became a dirge. He passed shuttered shops and silent windows, his world narrowing with every step until there was nothing left but a door and the man behind it.
The Old Pier Inn loomed before him, its sign swaying gently in the wind. He climbed the wooden steps, the boards creaking beneath his weight; a sound he had heard a thousand times, now transformed into an omen.
Inside, the front room was dim and empty save for a woman behind the counter; the innkeeper, reading a worn paperback. She looked up as he entered. Her gaze flickered once to the cleaver tucked under his coat, then back to his face. It did not widen in fear. It did not soften in concern. It simply hardened, as though something she had been waiting for had finally arrived.
Her hand slipped beneath the counter. She pressed a small switch on a concealed earpiece.
> "The subject is heading to Room 3," she whispered.
Hwan walked past her without pause. The words — if he'd even heard them — meant nothing to him now. His mind was a single, straight road, and it led only forward.
The corridor stretched before him; narrow, lined with peeling wallpaper, smelling faintly of salt and old wood. At the far end, a door waited. Tarnished brass. Number three.
Here.
Here was the man who had killed his son.
Hwan raised his fist. The wood beneath his knuckles felt fragile, breakable; nothing compared to the weight of the cleaver in his other hand. His heartbeat was steady. His breath, cold and measured.
This is where grief ends, he thought. This is where justice begins.