On the outskirts of Pacifica, cold dust blew through the air.
In front of a run-down building with a shabby neon sign that blinked
"Ripperdoc Clinic"
, an old man in threadbare clothes was hiding in a dark alley, swallowing his dry saliva again and again as he stared at the tightly shut iron door.Remembering the promise he’d been made not long ago—that someone would protect him under the dry tree—the old man reached out with trembling hands and gripped the cold metal handle.
At the same time, inside the basement where not a soul was coming through the door, Boris let out a yawn so wide it looked like his jaw might come unhinged as he leaned against a rusty operating table.
"Haaah..."
Normally, this was the hour when they’d be kidnapping people and tearing them apart alive for parts. But with only the smell of cheap disinfectant hanging in the air instead of blood, Boris scratched the back of his neck and felt strangely restless.
For a man who had lived his whole life like a beast, breathing in the stench of blood, this silence felt horribly unfamiliar.
Kreeeeek-.
Then the harsh scrape of the heavy iron door opening cut through Boris’s thoughts.
The one who cautiously came down the old stairs was an elderly drifter, looking terrified out of his mind.
One of the scavengers beside Boris looked over the man’s shabby clothes, frowned, and muttered, "What’s this? What’s an old man doing here?"
Thwack-!
Before the words were even out, Boris’s massive palm slammed mercilessly into the back of the underling’s head.
"You idiot, why do you think he’s here? He came for treatment, obviously!"
Ignoring the underling as he pitched forward, Boris forced his facial muscles into a grotesque smile.
"W-welcome. This way."
The scavengers’ welcome made the old man’s legs shake like reeds, but then his eyes caught sight of a silhouette sitting at an angle in the corner of the exam room, on an old chair.
The familiar mask, overlaid by a red goblin hologram. When the man who had handed him a beer gave him a greeting-like wave, the old man’s face filled with relief, and he followed them inside.
Once the old man lay down on the worn operating table, Boris approached and began the examination, jabbing at the man’s body with rough hands.
Finding a misaligned implant seam in the old man’s back, Boris pulled out a cold metal tool.
Just as the old man, already convinced they were about to rip the chrome out of him alive, squeezed his eyes shut—
Kaang, kreeeeek-.
Instead of the pain of a chainsaw carving into flesh, Boris’s blunt tool tightened the old chrome screw and carefully adjusted the loose gap that had been rattling around.
Then disinfectant was poured over the festering wound.
"Ugh!"
When the sting made the old man groan, Boris smeared on ointment with rough hands and wrapped a crude bandage tight around the wound.
The scavengers who had once butchered people were not only failing to rip his chrome out, but were actually fixing him up properly, disinfecting and bandaging him too. Just being able to walk out alive after receiving such crude treatment in a scavenger den that harvested organs from living people was enough to make the old man bow over and over on his way out, offering Boris sincere thanks.
"Th-thank you. Truly, thank you. I won’t forget the kindness of treating this old man."
As the old man’s heartfelt gratitude poured out, Boris’s thick facial muscles twitched in tiny spasms of embarrassment. He had spent his whole life hearing nothing but curses and screams from others, so the pure goodwill he was receiving for the first time in his life sent a strange chill down his spine.
Trying hard to hide his awkwardness, Boris scowled at his grotesquely swollen face and barked, "Ah, you old bastard, you talk way too damn much! If you’re fixed, then get lost already. Next time, bring some eddies properly!"
Waving him off irritably, Boris’s rough scolding only made the old man bow even lower as he climbed the basement stairs like he was being chased, thanking him again and again all the way out.
Kreeeeek, thud-.
When the heavy iron door finally shut with a grinding sound and the old man’s presence vanished completely, Boris was left alone in the empty exam room, staring blankly down at the cheap ointment in his hand as he was swept up in an emotion so intense he couldn’t even name it.
And the old man’s story, riding on the dry dust, quietly spread through the slums of Pacifica.
Then the next day, beneath the neon sign for the "Ripperdoc Clinic," two poor wretches clutching broken arms hovered in front of the tightly shut iron door, swallowing hard.
"What do we do? Is it really okay to go in?"
Just as they were too terrified to take another step, a raspy voice suddenly came from beside them.
"Go on in. I got treated just fine yesterday too."
It was the old drifter who had been treated the day before.
Straightening his bent back, the old man tapped the tightly fastened chrome screw and the cleanly wrapped bandage on his own back with a finger.
"No way..."
The two poor men’s eyes shook with disbelief, but the pain in their dying arms pushed them forward, and they slowly made their way to the iron door.
Approaching the hulking scavenger standing guard at the entrance, one of them asked in a tiny voice, "D-do you really treat people here?"
The scavenger frowned viciously and jerked his chin toward the door. "Can’t you read the sign? Get in already."
Hesitating, the two men stepped down the old stairs into the basement, where they faced Boris beside the rusty operating table and asked again, shaking like leaves, "W-w-we’re really getting treated here... right?"
"Damn... fuck..."
Before the question was even finished, Boris twisted his face and grabbed the bandages and ointment roughly.
A little while later—
Kreeeeek-. The heavy iron door opened, and the faces of the two poor men who came out were ghostly pale, as if they’d seen a spirit. Their broken arms were wrapped tight in sturdy splints and bandages, with no gaps left at all.
"Hey... we didn’t die, right?"
"Yeah..."
The two stared at each other in a daze, confirming each other’s survival before hurrying away into the slum alleys as if they were being chased.
The next day, four back-alley goons who’d been stabbed came in.
Even though the scavenger image still hung over the place like a curse, the desperate people at the bottom of the food chain started coming to the tiger’s den with their own feet, just to survive.
And so a week passed.
It still wasn’t what anyone would call crowded, but the empty back-alley clinic had started to see a steady trickle of one or two people a day.
Inside the exam room, Ji-hwan sat back in an old chair while Boris stood stiffly beside him, both of them looking out through the glass into the hallway.
The scavenger underlings who, until a week ago, had been cutting through human bone and flesh with rough hands were now smearing cheap ointment over poor people’s festering wounds and wrapping crude bandages around them.
The treated slum dwellers kept bowing and thanking them as they left.
The underlings left behind awkwardly wiped the blood from their hands and exchanged glances.
"Hey... doesn’t this feel weird as hell?"
"Yeah, fuck. You too?"
Beasts soaked in slaughter were undergoing a brutal change as they received the sincere gratitude of the weak. Boris, who had been silently watching the conversation, had his broad shoulders tensed ever so slightly too.
Ji-hwan’s calm voice fell toward the dazed Boris.
"How does it feel?"
A short question. Boris flinched and slowly turned his head.
"Sir?"
"I mean the feeling of hearing thanks from the people who spent their whole lives cursing you while dying."
At Ji-hwan’s question, Boris’s thick Adam’s apple bobbed violently.
Unable to speak right away, he hesitated for a long time, avoiding Ji-hwan’s gaze, before finally twisting his grotesquely swollen face and answering in a tiny voice, "It’s just... weird. It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like this, so my guts feel twisted up... but it’s not entirely filthy either. It’s a damn shitty feeling....."
It was the first unfamiliar, honest answer that had ever come out of his mouth. Ji-hwan slowly rose to his feet.
"Don’t forget that feeling."
Ji-hwan’s heavy combat boots passed by Boris’s side.
"Since I took you in, I’m the one responsible for you to the end.... whether that means killing you or keeping you alive. But whether you’ll live as someone who walks on two feet, or just become a beast that happens to walk on two legs, will be decided by the feeling you just had."
After giving Boris’s shoulder a quick pat, Ji-hwan opened the old iron door and stepped out of the basement.
Kreeeeek, thud-.
The iron door shut with a heavy scrape.
Left alone in the middle of the empty back-alley clinic, Boris stared blankly down at his own palms, hands that had spent a lifetime soaked in other people’s pain, and sank deep into thought.
When Ji-hwan opened the old iron door and stepped out wearing the goblin-pattern hologram mask, Pacifica’s cold dust brushed past the hem of his worn coat.
As he walked, the muddy slum streets and chaotic neon signs gradually gave way to narrow, damp alleys where the light no longer reached.
On the walls of that barren darkness, a hidden shadow stretched long behind Ji-hwan, and a steady set of footsteps followed after him.
Tap, tap-.
The moment Ji-hwan’s figure vanished as if it had dissolved into the depths of the alley, the footsteps trailing him came to an abrupt, startled stop.
Someone emerged from the darkness and hurriedly paced around the empty spot where Ji-hwan had disappeared, groping at the muddy ground and the old walls, trying to find a trace of him.
"Who are you?"
At the cold voice that dropped from behind her, the woman jumped and spun around, just about to draw the gun from her coat.
Ji-hwan’s iron grip burst out of the darkness and seized the woman’s slender throat in an instant. With enough force to snap her neck on the spot, he slammed the unknown intruder hard against the wall.
Crack.
'No way. Did they find out who I am?'
As the brief thought flashed through Ji-hwan’s dark eyes, killing intent surged out and his grip tightened hard around the throat in his hand.
"I said who the hell are you."
At the murderous question, the masked woman thrashed in the air and slapped at Ji-hwan’s solid forearm again and again.
It was a desperate, frantic gesture meaning she couldn’t speak because her throat was blocked.
Seeing that, Ji-hwan loosened his grip just a little, and a choked gasp burst from the woman’s mouth.
"Kek... keck...!"
As she panted hard, tears of pain gathered at the corners of her eyes.
After coughing, she hurriedly revealed her identity.
"N... NCPD!"
Ji-hwan’s eyes went cold.
"A cop sneaks into a lawless zone dressed like this without even wearing a uniform? You trying to die?"
As Ji-hwan’s pressure grew heavier and heavier, the woman shook her head in a panic.
"I-I came to ask for help!"
"Help?"
At Ji-hwan’s question, she hurriedly corrected herself.
"N-no... I came to make a deal."
"...You’ve got the wrong man. The boss here isn’t me. It’s Boris."
"I know. But... I heard that after you came, the atmosphere here changed completely."
At that answer, Ji-hwan’s brow twitched slightly.
'Where the hell did she hear that from... Ah.'
One person flashed through his mind. Ji-hwan, realizing that Daphne from the Moth bar had leaked the information in secret, clicked his tongue softly.
'Tch. Should I go warn her?'
Thinking for a moment about Daphne’s sharpness, Ji-hwan let out a short sigh.
What was done was done. No point making a fuss over it now. As he brushed the thought aside, the alley’s strange atmosphere registered on his sharpened senses.
Between the stench of the sewer and the old cracks in the walls where rats scurried around, the dark corners were filled with the presence of homeless people crouched low and holding their breath, trying not to get caught up with Ji-hwan in his grotesque goblin mask.
It was not a good place for a serious conversation.
"Let’s move somewhere else."
Ji-hwan passed silently by the woman, who was still pressed against the wall and gasping from the shock, and walked forward.
As the hem of his huge old coat brushed by, the woman finally got her breathing under control and shouted after him, stumbling after his back into the dust of the dark alley, "W-wait!"
Her hurried footsteps followed Ji-hwan’s heavy back deeper into the alley.
Ji-hwan had originally been planning to stop by the Moth bar again for a glass of sticky sweet liquor, so with this sudden uninvited guest in tow, a sigh slipped through the gaps of his red goblin mask, and he turned toward the scavenger-modified clinic instead.
Following the sound of his footsteps, the woman’s curved silhouette, her face hidden under a deeply pulled-down coat collar, appeared inside the scavenger hideout. One scavenger who had been wiping away the blood from treating people glanced over, then made an obscene gesture with his finger toward the colleague beside him and snickered, as if to say the new boss had brought back a woman too.
At the filthy gesture implying he’d dragged in some bottom-rung whore because he was a man too, Boris scowled and let out a deep sigh before barking at them to stop screwing around and get back to work.
At Boris’s heavy scolding, the bastards jumped and started cleaning again.
After that, the heavy iron door shut and the two of them entered the office that had once been Boris’s private room. Ji-hwan leaned back in the chair in the middle of the room and jerked his chin toward the luxury leather sofa Boris had once treasured so much.
"Sit."
"I’m Stella Ramos."
As the woman took off her old coat and carefully lowered herself onto the sofa, swallowing hard, Ji-hwan gave his own name in a dry voice.
"Zero."
After the brief introductions, silence settled in. Stella lifted her wet eyes and continued in a voice thick with resolve.
"I want to change the corrupt police force somehow. The rotten seniors and the brass..."
"No."
Ji-hwan’s blade-sharp answer cut her off at once, and Stella hurriedly pointed at the closed iron door as she kept trying to persuade him.
"Hasn’t this place changed since you came? Even those awful scavengers outside changed. If it’s you, with that kind of power, you could change the police from the inside too."
Ji-hwan scratched his chin indifferently and replied, "That was only possible because they were nothing but beasts that had lost their way, and because I’m still staying here, keeping their leashes in my hands."
Stella bit her lip hard and fell into deep thought for a moment. Then, after steadying her breathing, she spoke again.
"If I can get information from inside the NCPD—things like tracking nets and crackdown movements—I’ll bring them to you first. In return, please protect me and my little sister."
"Both of you won’t work."
Ji-hwan’s lazy voice pressed down on the room.
"I’ve only got one body. I can’t perfectly protect two people at the same time."
At that answer, Stella’s eyes wavered for a moment, but then her gaze settled.
"Then please protect my sister."
"...Fine."
At her vow to protect her sister even if it meant sacrificing herself, Ji-hwan’s dark eyes twitched ever so slightly.
He liked the way she was willing to throw her life away to protect someone else, but he didn’t show it. Instead, he slowly stood and casually extended a hand in his worn tactical glove.
Stella looked dazed by the unexpected acceptance, then carefully reached out and firmly shook his rough hand.
"...Right... what’s your sister’s name?"
Stella let out a breath that was noticeably easier than before and answered, "Sasha. Sasha Yakovleva."
Ji-hwan walked her out of the office, seeing Stella off after she left her sister’s name behind. By the time they passed the corridor the scavengers had scrubbed clean and reached the entrance of the old building—
Kwaang-!
A loud crash slammed brutally into the tightly shut iron door.
At the sudden boom, Ji-hwan and Stella both turned toward the shattered entrance, and heavy footsteps and rough shouts stormed into the building.
"Which bastards put up a sign in our territory without permission!"
The ones who burst through the door were three Animals gang members, their drug-swollen muscles covered in beast tattoos.
As they swaggered and scanned the room, their eyes locked onto Stella sitting on the sofa, and a sticky sneer spread across their faces.
"Oh, we’ve got a pretty bitch in here too? Want us to count her as the rent instead?"
At the filthy insult, Stella’s eyes hardened coldly, and the red goblin mask beside her twisted with ferocious killing intent.
Ji-hwan was just about to move, ready to have a nice little body conversation and send those bastards on a tour of hell—when
"Watch your mouth."
It was Boris who stepped in front of Ji-hwan.
The massive man over 190 centimeters tall blocked the Animals with a heavy presence, unleashing the same vicious intimidation he’d had back when he was still a gang boss.
"I’m the owner here. If you don’t want to die, get the hell out now."
Watching Boris’s broad back as he growled, Ji-hwan stopped the body that had been about to rise.
'If that monster steps in, those bastards are dead for sure...!'
Boris’s tearful struggle to keep the Animals alive by taking the lead himself. At the absurd sight, Ji-hwan swallowed a laugh and quietly leaned back against the chair.
"Ha! This fucking scavenger bastard’s lost his mind..."
One of the Animals snorted and reached for the shotgun at his hip, but—
Click-clack!
The scavenger underlings surrounding the office inside and out all racked their assault rifles at once and aimed their barrels at the intruders.
In front of dozens of blue-black gun barrels, the thick throats of the Animals who had been so cocky just a second ago bobbed violently.
"Fuck..."
Sensing the situation turning against them, one of the bastards spat a sticky glob onto the floor.
"Just you wait, you trash bastards."
After that, they backed away and fled the basement in a hurry.
Once their ugly backs had vanished completely from sight, Boris and the others lowered their raised barrels.
Watching the whole thing, Ji-hwan’s goblin mask seemed to settle into a satisfied expression as his voice rang out toward them.
"Throw salt on them."
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