Chapter 10

Debut Stage

The sound of asphalt splitting was lower than expected. The sound of something deep underground stretching awake.

The square patch lifted, split down the middle, and blue light leaked out through the gap. It was bigger than the Sillim Station bus stop, bigger than Mangwon Reservoir—about three manhole covers laid end to end. The light spread across the intersection floor and stained the white crosswalk lines blue.

And something climbed up out of the gap.

It was a wolf—though for a wolf, it was the size of a calf, its gray fur stiff as wire, its fangs jutting out past its lips. One. Two.

Three.

At the second-floor window of the PC bang, PD Park sucked in a breath. The camcorder's red recording light blinked.

The three of them raised their noses in the middle of the intersection and looked all around. Their snouts swept past the shuttered soup restaurant and phone store, the pharmacy and convenience store, and stopped on the first-floor window of the PC bang building—the window that had shattered in the past life. Beyond the glass, it was empty.

The lights were off, too.

The first wolf turned its head. Toward the bus stop.

Inside a chalk circle, a young man in a hockey helmet stood holding a wooden sword.

Doyun held his breath with his back pressed to the soup restaurant's shutter. His empty hands kept feeling along the shutter's ridges.

The first wolf ran.

To Doyun's eyes, it was a gray mass streaking across the intersection, far faster than the Mangwon-dong rats—it cleared ten meters in two bounds.

Taeha didn't move until the moment the wolf leapt. When the fangs were a meter from his helmet, his right foot slid half a step to the side. The wolf bit down on the spot where Taeha had been, and there was nothing there but air.

The wooden sword cut upward from below. Up under the wolf's jaw.

A dull, short crack of oak meeting bone rang across the intersection. The wolf's body flipped half a turn in midair and hit the paving blocks. It tried to get up and its legs buckled; it tried again, and they buckled again.

Taeha didn't give it the opening. He brought the sword down a second time. The crown of the head, this time.

The wolf stopped moving.

The second and third wolves stood frozen in the middle of the intersection, looking at the fallen first one, then at the young man in the circle. They only growled low; they didn't charge.

The documentary line had been a lie. It was a past-life memory. April 30th, the Sillim-dong intersection: when the first wolf rammed its head into the PC bang window and went down, the other two hesitated on the spot, then went back down the hole. That hesitation was what let Grandma, her leg slashed by the broken glass, crawl up to the second floor to safety.

This time, what made them hesitate was Taeha's wooden sword.

When the second wolf took a step back, the third did too. But then the third suddenly turned its head. Toward the second-floor window of the PC bang building.

Doyun followed its gaze and looked up. At the second-floor window, PD Park was pressed right up against the glass with his camcorder. Trying to get a better angle. Beside him, Oh Malsun was tugging at the hem of his vest.

The third wolf ran for the PC bang building.

The first-floor window. Right above it, the second-floor window. The very window a wolf had leapt through in the past life. This time there were people right above it, at the second-floor window.

"Taeha!"

Doyun shouted. In ten years as a manager, this was only the third time he'd yelled from the side of the stage.

Taeha was already running.

Out of the circle, across the intersection, cutting diagonally toward the third wolf's flank. To Doyun's eyes, Taeha looked slower than the wolf. It seemed like the wolf would reach the window first.

The wolf leapt at the first-floor window.

Taeha threw the wooden sword.

The oak sword spun twice in the air and struck the wolf's hind leg. Its body twisted midair, and instead of the window, it slammed into the concrete pillar beside it.

The instant the wolf hit the ground, Taeha was on top of it—empty-handed, since the sword had rolled away under the pillar.

Doyun didn't see what happened next clearly. Taeha pinning the wolf's neck with his knee, snatching the sword from under the pillar, bringing it down again—it all looked like one motion. The wolf thrashed a few times, then stopped.

The second wolf had watched all of it from the middle of the intersection. It turned, dove into the gap, and vanished into the blue light.

The gap slowly closed. Left on the asphalt were a crack, two wolves, and one young man gripping a wooden sword, gasping for breath.

The intersection was quiet.

The soup restaurant's shutter rose halfway and the owner poked her head out. The pharmacy's shutter went up and the pharmacist stepped out with his glasses off. The convenience store owner raised his shutter all the way and stood in front of the door. His arms weren't crossed.

The second-floor window of the PC bang opened and Oh Malsun leaned out. She didn't say anything, just looked down. The first-floor window was intact. The pillar beside it had a crack in it shaped like a wolf's head.

When Taeha took off the helmet, sweat dripped from the tip of his chin. He looked down at the wooden sword, down at the wolves, and finally up at the second-floor window.

"...Grandma, you okay?"

"You?"

"I'm fine."

"Then we're good."

She shut the window.

PD Park came running down the stairs. Still holding the camcorder. His face was white as a sheet, but his eyes had a strange gleam.

"Doyun. Doyun."

"PD-nim, you got way too close to the window."

"I know. I'm sorry. But Doyun."

PD Park shoved the camcorder's screen in front of Doyun. The scene he'd just shot was playing. A high angle from the second-floor window, a composition that fit the whole intersection into one frame. Blue light, three wolves, the young man in the circle. And then the diagonal sprint across the intersection and the wooden sword spinning twice in the air.

"This is good TV. No—not TV... this is real."

Doyun looked at the screen. Taeha was small in it. You could barely see his face. A hockey helmet, a wooden sword, a hoodie. And yet the way that small figure stood alone in the middle of the intersection somehow held the eye.

He'd seen it hundreds of times from beside the stage over ten years. The moment someone whose name nobody knew yet stepped into the center of the stage for the first time.

A police siren drew near. The patrol car Moon Jaeseok had sent. Behind it, a man in a gray windbreaker got out holding a clipboard.

Doyun saw the man and sighed. It was going to be seventeen forms again.

At 9 p.m. that night, a one-minute-forty-second clip ran at the end of the late news on PD Park's cable channel. By the next morning, it was on the front page of every portal.

【BREAKING】 Rift at Sillim-dong Intersection... Civilian Awakened Subdues Creatures Single-Handedly

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