The alley was cold and damp, each breath turning into a small cloud in the night air. Jin-woo pressed himself against the wall, ears straining for any sound of pursuit. Nothing but the distant rumble of cars and the drip of water from a rusty pipe.
The Collection. Faulty Memory.
The words ricocheted in his head like trapped bullets. Kim had spoken of a hidden war, of art collectors. But how could such an organization exist without a trace? In the age of information, everything leaves a digital footprint. Even deleted things leave fragments.
He retreated deeper into the shadow and pulled out his old phone. The battery was low, but he had a weak Wi-Fi signal from a nearby cafe. He knew a direct search for "The Collection" or "Faulty Memory" would be naive—and might flag his IP address if they were truly monitoring.
But he wasn't an average user. Years of scouring the internet's dark corners for rare fight clips had taught him something about stealth.
His plan: Search for the shadows, not the objects.
Instead of the names Kim mentioned, he started searching for patterns. Incidents of "disappearances" of rare traditional martial arts masters worldwide. Thefts of ancient manuscripts from private museums. Specialized forums on obscure fighting arts suddenly shuttered without explanation. In different languages: Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Portuguese.
Using a simple translator and a mix of precise keywords, he began to find threads.
A deleted forum on "Lost Malaysian Silat Lineages"—its cached archive showed discussions of a "raid" before it went dark.
An old article from a local Turkish newspaper about the theft of an Ottoman manuscript on "Palace Wrestling," with vague witness descriptions of "faceless men."
A report from Greece on the mysterious death of a "Pankration" instructor, his training notebooks missing.
The threads were scattered, but the pattern was clear: targeting the isolated, the rare, the forgotten.
Then, he found something more intriguing. On a deep Russian martial arts forum, there was an almost mythical account of an organization called "The Shadow Reservoir" or "Теневой Резервуар." The description was vague, but it mentioned something about "Collectors" seeking "pure patterns" and "erasing faulty copies."
Faulty Memory.
Jin-woo shivered. It was a link. But a tenuous, digital-myth kind of link.
Next, he remembered something else. During training, Kim wore a simple leather wristband. Once, when it was slightly undone, Jin-woo had glimpsed a strange inscription carved on the inner side: a series of symbols not from any known alphabet, but which looked like schematic representations of fighting forms—a kick, a strike, a block—connected by lines.
He drew the symbols from memory on a sketching app on his phone. His photographic memory served him perfectly. Then, he did a reverse image search.
At first, nothing. Then, after refining the filters and searching for "abstract martial arts symbols," one result appeared. A blurry image from a long-defunct website. The image was of an old metal insignia with a strikingly similar design.
The website was from an archive: "Society for the Preservation of Combat Heritage – Seoul Branch (Closed 2015)."
This was the first real thread.
Jin-woo traced the old website's listed address from the archive. It was in the old "Itaewon" district. Not too far from his current location.
He made a decision. He had to move. His phone was dying, and the sense of danger grew with every minute spent in the open. The old place might be abandoned. It might not be.
But before he went, he had to do one more thing. He had fled the garage and the training, but he hadn't fled from himself. His mind was still full of the last thing he'd seen: Kim's strange, liquid style against the two men.
He closed his eyes, standing in the dark. He replayed the moments in his head. Not just once. He began the copying process. The first movement: Kim's weird, water-like backward flow to avoid a strike. He replayed it in his mind's eye.
1... 2... 3...
It wouldn't be enough. He needed hundreds. But it was a start. He was planting the first seed in the soil of his memory, starting the slow, painful process of growth.
He opened his eyes. Fatigue weighed on him, but his resolve had hardened. He was no longer just a victim. He was an information hunter now. A shadow hunter.
He gathered himself, pulled his jacket collar up to partly cover his face, and began moving cautiously through the back alleys toward the old address of the Society for the Preservation of Combat Heritage. Every step was measured, every shadow a potential watcher.
He knew he might be walking straight into a trap. But he also knew libraries weren't burned by accident. And he had to find out who held the matches.