WHACK.
WHACK.
WHACK.
WHACK.
All that could be heard in the classroom was the relentless sound of an innocent student being beaten—for what seemed like no reason at all.
It's always like this, Jihoon thought, taking another brutal blow from his bully. There was nothing he could do. His tormentor was a karate champion, and Jihoon himself didn't even know how to fight. He was just a pathetic kid, fifteen years old, trapped inside his house day after day, accomplishing nothing. No one would intervene—he had no friends. And even if someone had cared… empathy was performative, wasn't it? People only acted according to their preferences. That was morality, at least in Jihoon's mind.
He knew he was no exception. He was just like everyone else in the room, watching and doing nothing. The difference? He didn't pretend morality was real. He wanted a life filled with pleasure, even if goodness felt like a fiction. And suffering… suffering was very real.
Rage burned inside him as his bully's fists rained down. Yet he was too weak to fight back. This has to change, he thought. All his ideals of what a man should be—the strength, the courage—he embodied none of them. He was a coward, confined to his house, scrawny and weak, beaten daily. How could he live with himself, knowing he contradicted everything he believed a man ought to be?
Does following rules even matter, he wondered.
The contemplation ended as the beating did. Jihoon collapsed to the floor like a dog, bruised and broken.
His name? Baek Hyunwoo. A karate genius who had quit competing for unknown reasons. Rumors were all that remained of his former brilliance.
The school day was over — or at least, it was over for Jihoon in every way that mattered. He walked home with his head down, defeated; the scenery blurred past him like a film he didn't belong in. When he opened the door, there was no one there to meet him.
He had no father. His mother? Ha. He didn't even think of her as a mother. Family was a fiction to him, a story people told to feel less alone. She never met the conditions of that story—she was never around. Night shifts swallowed her whole; she left before he came home from school and didn't return until four in the morning. You might think she worked to provide for him. You'd be wrong. She didn't care, and that indifference had curdled into his own: he didn't care about her either.
He collapsed onto his bed, bruises humming under his skin and a single thought echoing in his head: the beating. I will change. I will change. I will change. It was a mantra that felt both absurd and necessary. He wanted to learn to fight, to stop being a victim, but he was broke and clueless. Still, desperation made him do stupid things.
He dragged himself to his battered old computer and typed, fingers trembling: how to fight. He shook his head at the search results, at himself — is this really how I'm going to become strong? — but he kept going. He tried. Days bled into weeks. He practiced what he could, taught himself small disciplines, refused to let the habit die.
For the first time in his life, Jihoon grew tired of the loneliness and decided to act on it. He stepped outside by his own will. He didn't know exactly where his bully would be, or how the confrontation would go. He only knew he would hunt him down if he had to—off the streets, through alleys, to the ends of the earth—until he'd forced the truth of himself into the open.