Scene 1. Awakening
Blood had pooled inside his mouth.
Something lukewarm and metallic filled the space between tongue and gum. He couldn't swallow. His body knew before he did that he must not. He turned his head sideways and spat. A thread of dark-red saliva stretched down onto the dry wooden floor.
His tongue stung.
Where he had bitten deep, the swollen flesh scraped raw against the roof of his mouth each time it touched. He had clenched his jaw. In the instant of the fall, his own teeth had torn into his own flesh. The tip of his tongue traced the edge of the wound. Ragged strips of torn meat mapped themselves against his tongue like a landscape.
His own blood.
His own tongue he had bitten.
It took too long to confirm that. The question—since when had he been able to distinguish the taste of his own blood from someone else's—caught in the back of his throat, then was swallowed down.
He inhaled.
Acrid smoke scratched deep inside his nasal cavity. Sweet and bitter at once, the kind that numbed the root of the tongue. Opium. Layered over it, old dust and damp moisture clung together until the air itself felt heavy. Between the wooden beams of the ceiling, cobwebs swayed loosely. A faint light seeped through the cracked rafters, but whether it was moonlight or the first gray of dawn, he could not tell.
His back was cold. The grain of the dry wooden floor scraped rough along his spine. His clothes were soaked. Something that could have been blood or sweat clung sticky between his back and the floor.
Doctor Jang's hideout.
He turned his head. His neck resisted, stiff. He forced the rusted-hinge creak of it sideways.
He saw the corner. Behind the old folding screen, a white cloth had been spread. A small body lay curled upon it. The blanket was drawn up to the chin, and a thin breathing rose and fell in steady rhythm. Through the gaps in the screen's ink painting, all that was visible was the trailing end of loose hair.
A wire that had been drawn taut through his entire body snapped.
The muscles beneath his back released, and only then did the cold of the floor climb up through his spine. His clenched jaw loosened, and fresh blood seeped from his wounded tongue, but he did not spit it out.
"Yeonhwa."
The sound that came from his own throat was like scraping the edge of a cracked earthen jar.
"You didn't touch her."
The answer came from beyond the darkness. Dry and low. A drawling breath that seemed to exhale with opium smoke still held inside.
"That's your blood. You bit your tongue."
He meant the dark-red stain spat onto the floor. He pressed the wound on his tongue once more. The sting returned, sharp and clear.
Yes. His own blood.
His own.
Scene 2. Corruption
The relief did not last.
While he lay on his back steadying his breath, something inside his body began to stir. It did not come from his wounds. The throbbing of his torn forearm, the dull resonance of his bruised ribs, the stinging numbness of his swollen tongue—all of it was there, but muffled, like noise on the other side of a glass wall. The information that his body was broken arrived at his brain but never reached his flesh.
Something else came instead.
It started below his sternum. At first, a wringing sensation. A spasm like squeezing something already empty, like twisting a dry rag. It hurt. But simultaneous with the pain was something begging to be given. Pain and craving tangled into a single body, clenching and unclenching beneath his sternum.
It crept lower.
In the center of his belly, it crouched like an ember. Not hot. Blue-cold. His insides cracked apart as though he had swallowed a slab of ice, and what rose through the fractures was not pain but thirst.
A thirst that did not want water.
A thirst that lived not in his throat but in his teeth.
The yellow drug surfaced in his mind. The cloudy liquid that had sloshed inside the syringe. His body remembered what it felt like when that liquid spread through his veins. Every sharp thing beneath the skin going dull, the starving thing between his ribs falling asleep. The thirst rising now came from the place where that drug had been cut off. The hole the drug used to fill gaped empty, and that hole was howling to be filled with something else.
His fingernails scraped the floor.
Between the wood grain, his nail tips dug in with a drawn-out screech. He could not stop. All ten fingers were clawing at the floor on their own. As though something were buried beneath the boards.
Footsteps.
The wooden floor creaked. One step. Two. Doctor Jang was approaching.
And the smell came.
Beneath the opium smoke. Seeping through old book-paper and dried herbs—faint but vivid. The heat rising from dry skin. The scent of what flowed beneath the thin flesh of a wrist.
Saliva seeped between his teeth.
Thick and hot, it coated his molars and flooded his mouth. His tongue swept the roof of his mouth on its own. The wounded tongue scraped against unhealed flesh and wrung out fresh blood, but his own blood filled nothing.
He saw Doctor Jang's throat. Dry skin exposed above the wrinkled collar. Beneath it, something pulsed—thin, steady. Once. Twice. Every sound in the world sank underwater and went mute, but the thing beating in the old man's throat rang clear as a bell.
The blue-cold ember in his belly roared to life.
"The drug..."
The fingers that had been clawing the floor stopped. Wood splinters were embedded beneath his nails, but he did not feel them. Blood from the wound on his forearm was running down and soaking the floor, but he did not know that either. He knew only one thing. The thing beating in that throat. He needed it.
"...isn't enough."
The words that left his mouth were not the meaning he had intended. He had meant to ask for the pain to be lessened. He had meant to ask for more medicine. That was what he had said. And yet the sound of him swallowing his saliva echoed through the room, slick and wet. On the dry wooden floor, that sound alone was drenched.
Doctor Jang's footstep retreated half a pace.
Because even to his own ears the sound belonged to a beast—and because that was exactly right—he could not say another word.
Scene 3. Binding
His head turned.
Toward where Yeonhwa lay. Not by his own will. The muscles of his neck contracted on their own, his jaw angling toward the folding screen—and in that instant he seized his own chin with both hands.
Bone ground against bone.
He wrenched himself forward. As his fingers dug into his jaw, blood seeped from his wounded tongue and ran down to his palm. He could not close his mouth. His teeth kept trying to part. The molars were opening to bite something, not to breathe.
He stood. One knee buckled, then straightened. He walked toward the wall. Away from Yeonhwa.
With every step that carried him farther, something behind him pulled. An invisible hook had been driven into the center of his spine, and it tore at the flesh inside, demanding he turn back. Beyond the screen, a thin breathing rose and fell in steady rhythm. That sound swelled louder and louder inside his ears. Between each breath, a pulse threaded itself in. Not his own pulse. Small and even and sweet.
He did not look back.
He saw the closet. He pulled at the old door and the hinges shrieked. Inside, chains hung. Rusted and grease-caked, thick links of iron. Whether they had once been used to restrain madmen in the opium den, every ring bore old scratch marks.
He dragged them out.
Clang. The chains spilled across the floor, cold metallic sound flooding the room. Beyond the screen, the breathing hitched for a single beat, then steadied again.
He wound the chain around his wrist. Once. Twice. The moment rusted iron met skin, a spike of cold shot up from the inside of his forearm to his shoulder. Cold. That coldness collided with the heat inside his flesh, and his muscles seized on their own. His teeth chattered.
He wound it around his ankles too. Threaded the iron ring through the metal hook bolted to the wall. The sound the chain made dragging across the floor was the sound of a leash on a beast. No—that was exactly what it was.
Doctor Jang stood watching. Opium pipe set down, no expression visible between his wrinkles. Neither startled nor retreating. The face of a man for whom this was not the first time.
"Lock it. Now."
He held out the padlock. It was not the wrist wrapped in chain that trembled but the fingers gripping the lock. If he let go, he would undo it. Unchain himself, rise, walk past the folding screen. Toward the sleeping thing. Toward the sweet thing beating in that throat.
Doctor Jang's dry hand took the padlock.
Click.
The sound of it locking split the air of the room in two.
Scene 4. Captivity
Iron bit into flesh.
Each time he twisted his wrist, the rusted ring dug deeper, carving red lines across his skin. Cold. The chill seeped to his fingertips, stiffening each knuckle. That was good. The cold iron was pressing down, layer by layer, on the blue-cold thing inside his flesh. As long as the chain stayed wound around his body, his own legs could not carry him. Past the folding screen. Toward the sleeping thing. He could not reach it.
And that was good.
He gasped for breath. With each inhale, the inside of his ribs swelled and collapsed. Rough, rapid, uneven breathing. With each exhale, the breath that spilled from his mouth bloomed white. The room was not cold. His body was too hot. Opium smoke drifted lazily beneath the ceiling, but inhaling it dulled nothing. Before, the smoke alone had been enough to put the sharp things between his ribs to sleep. Now, filling his lungs with it felt as hollow as dust settling in an empty room.
Doctor Jang was measuring the distance.
The point where the chain, stretched to its limit, could not reach. Exactly two steps beyond. He stood there, back against the wall, tilting a glass. Amber liquid swayed inside. Scotch. Through the dust and opium, a thin thread of sharp, grain-charred bitterness unwound itself.
That color caught his eye.
Amber. Deep brown rippling inside the glass under the flicker of candlelight. He knew it was the same color as his own eyes. But what he saw now was not the color.
It was Doctor Jang's throat, reflected above the rim.
Dry skin exposed between the folds of collar. Beneath the wrinkled flesh, something pushed upward in the faintest motion. Thin. Steady. Each time the candle flickered, that movement cast a shadow and erased it.
Once. Twice. Three times.
He could count them. From this distance, in this darkness, he could count with his eyes what beat in the old man's throat. What should not be visible to human eyes was visible.
He swallowed.
Thick and hot, it slid down his throat and scalded every surface it passed. His molars locked together. Between his teeth, the wet sound of saliva being crushed was audible even to himself. The chain around his wrist clinked. His body was leaning forward. Since when, he did not know. His knees had lifted from the floor, and both arms stretched to the end of the chain.
He could not reach. Two steps short.
Doctor Jang took a sip of scotch. The hand that lowered the glass moved slowly. His gaze did not drop. He showed no surprise. The thing chained to the wall was growling and dragging its body toward him, and this old man stood with his back against the wall, drinking.
The beast inside the cage and the keeper outside it.
A single pulse beat in Doctor Jang's throat.
The chain sang taut. Iron striking iron—a sharp ring pierced through the room. The metal hook in the wall groaned, shedding plaster dust.
Only then did Doctor Jang's gaze lower. The hand holding the glass did not tremble. He simply took one step back.
Three steps now.
The thing hanging from the end of the chain, sprawled face-down on the floor, panted in ragged bursts. The muscles of its forearms bulged tight around the iron, and all ten fingers curled slowly closed, then opened, then closed again on the wooden floor. Its mouth hung half-open. The breath leaking between its teeth dampened the floor beneath it.
In the darkness, amber burned.
Two eyes looking up at Doctor Jang's throat. Still chained. Still unextinguished.