Returning to consciousness was not an ascent, but a fall into an icy well. Coach Chang Wo regained awareness with the sensation that his skull was filled with hot lead, and his temples were clamped in a vise. The ringing in his ears slowly dissipated, yielding to a silence so thick and dense it could be cut with a knife. He tried to move—and his body responded with a dull, constricting pain. The rope dug into his chest, wrists, and ankles, merging with the throbbing in his wounded head into one continuous tapestry of suffering.
"What the hell!? Where am I!?" His own shout sounded deafeningly loud in this dead silence, echoing somewhere in the heights of a concrete vault. Panic, sharp and blind, pierced his throat.
Beside him, his wife stirred. Chang Yeon—her name surfaced in his consciousness as the first clear island. He heard her ragged inhale, a weak moan, then—a sharp, panicked jerk of her body trying to break the bonds.
"What's happening!? Where are we!?" Her voice, always so soft and calming, was piercing, breaking into a shriek.
"Chang Yeon! Darling!" Chang Wo shouted into the darkness, desperately twisting his head, trying to see something. His eyes slowly adapted. It wasn't complete darkness—somewhere above, through the empty eye sockets of windows, a grimy moonlight seeped in. It snatched contours from the gloom—piles of junk, columns, and… plastic sheeting. Everywhere, plastic sheeting. It shimmered like a giant spiderweb, enveloping the space before him in a ghostly, rustling cocoon. And inside it—silhouettes.
His wife. Tied to a pillar two meters away from him. Her head hung limply on her chest, then jerked up sharply, her eyes searching for him in the half-light.
"Chang Su Yeon! Chang Yeon!" he yelled again, and his gaze, darting to the right, found his daughter. She hung from the ropes like a broken marionette, her body completely relaxed, her head thrown back, long hair hiding her face. Twelve-year-old Chang Su Yeon. The girl who had been laughing at dinner an hour ago.
"Darling, what's happening here!?" Chang Yeon's voice trembled, slipping into a hysterical trill. "Chang Su Yeon, Su Yeon! Little Su Yeon! Wake up, baby!"
She was looking at their daughter, tied to a pillar two meters to her right, and her breathing became rapid, shallow, hinting at hyperventilation.
Chang Wo felt his mind sliding along the edge of an abyss. He shook his head, trying to squeeze at least a grain of understanding from his fogged brain. Fragments surfaced in hindsight: dinner, leaving the restaurant, a dark alley… a blow. A flash of pain. And nothing.
And then, like an icy knife to the solar plexus, a new, all-consuming thought pierced his consciousness.
"Chang Mi!!! Where is he!?" he howled, looking around wildly, twisting his head so that the rope dug into his neck. "Chang Mi!!!"
"Chang Mi!!!" his wife's scream merged with his into a single piercing duet of horror.
The infant. Their son. Chang Mi. The small, warm bundle that had just been sleeping in the carrier.
"Chang Su Yeon… Chang Mi… Darling… My darlings…" Chang Wo mumbled, and despair surged in such a heavy, suffocating wave that he almost lost consciousness again.
He saw his wife, Chang Yeon, break into screams, pleas, incoherent calls for help that shattered against the indifferent concrete walls. But with each minute, her strength waned. Her cries grew quieter, turning into hoarse sobs, then into silent lip movements. Her eyes glazed over, staring into emptiness. She had fallen into a state of shock, deep and hopeless, where the pain was already too great to feel.
It was into this sepulchral silence, broken only by their ragged sobs, that a shadow stepped.
From behind a column, from the dense gloom beyond the plastic bubble, Ming You emerged. He moved soundlessly, like a ghost. His face, lit by a slanted beam of moonlight, was empty. No malice, no rage, not even pleasure. Just emptiness, more terrifying than any grimace of hatred. It seemed he didn't see people before him, but merely pieces arranged on a chessboard that needed to be removed from the path.
He moved closer to the edge of the plastic field. The rustle of his clothes against the sheeting was the only sound. Ming You stopped, looking down at them.
"To be honest, only the coach is a hindrance here, Chang Wo, to be precise," his voice was even, calm, almost thoughtful. "But unfortunately, or rather unfortunately for my wasted time, I'll have to take all of you with him. After all, when you got married, you vowed to die together. So consider that the vow will be kept."
The words were uttered with such chilling, mundane simplicity that Chang Wo was momentarily struck dumb. Then his brain finally processed the information. Recognized him. The student. The troublesome bully expelled from the Yoshido basketball club. Ming You.
Rage, impotent and therefore even more searing, mixed with soul-freezing fear. Chang Wo raised his head, and his gaze, full of mute question and horror, met the youth's empty eyes.
"Ming You… you bastard!" burst from him, his voice breaking into a rasp. "What the hell are you doing!? Have you really sunk to the level of such scum!? Why are you doing this!? Why!?"
Chang Yeon, hearing the name, tore her gaze away from her daughter with difficulty. Her eyes, full of tears and incomprehension, darted from her husband to the standing youth.
Ming You didn't blink. He slowly leaned down, bringing his face close to the coach's. He smelled of cold, dust, and something metallic.
"Just finally understand," he uttered quietly, almost a whisper, but each word hammered into their consciousness. "You're in the way of my victory. Consequently, you have to be eliminated."
Chang Wo felt a sticky sweat trickle down his spine despite the cold. His mind feverishly searched for an escape, a hook, a weak spot.
"And where…" he began and fell silent, fear blocking his throat. He forced himself to exhale. "Chang Mi!!!" he cried out, unable to bear the unknown.
And as if in answer to his cry, Ming You took a step back into the shadow and returned, holding something small, wrapped in a blanket. An infant carrier.
"Looking for this, right?" he asked, and for the first time, notes of something vaguely resembling interest sounded in his voice.
Ming You took the infant with one hand, freeing him from the carrier. The tiny body in a blue onesie hung limply. Ming You held him on his palm, assessing the weight, then lightly tossed him up and caught him. The movement was as thoughtless as tossing a tennis ball.
"Chang Mi!!!" A heart-rending wail from his wife, full of such primal agony that even Ming You froze for a moment, as if listening to an unfamiliar sound.
"Ming You!!!" Chang Wo screamed, and tears, hot and salty, streamed from his eyes, mixing with sweat on his face. "I beg you, don't touch my family! Yes! You're right! It's my fault for kicking you out of the basketball club! Me! Only me! So don't touch them! Kill me, do whatever you want to me, but let them go! Please!"
He begged. Humiliated himself. Sobbed. Every cell of his being screamed from helplessness.
Ming You looked at the crying infant in his hand. The child's face was wrinkled, his tiny mouth wide open in a now-silent, frightened cry. He shifted his gaze to the coach, then back to the child. A shadow of something flickered across his face—not regret, no. Rather, a professional assessment.
"By the way, Coach Chang Wo," he said thoughtfully, "I decided to recall your instructions about throwing the ball. Wrist, elbow, sequence." He transferred the child into both hands, positioned him along his forearm, held him close, then straightened his arms in front of him, as if preparing to make a pass or an overhead shot. "I'm holding him correctly, right, Coach?"
"Ming You! No! Stop! I'll do anything you want! Anything! You can come back to the team! Be captain! Coach! Anything! Just don't touch him!" Chang Wo thrashed in the ropes, trying in vain to break free, the skin on his wrists tearing off in bloody strips.
"My baby boy!" Chang Yeon's voice was barely audible now, hoarse from continuous screaming.
But Ming You didn't hear. Or he heard, but it was just background noise, meaningless. His attention was fully focused on the object in his hands and on an imaginary target somewhere in the darkness. His face remained impassive, like a mask. He didn't even deign to look at the parents, merely squinting, assessing the distance to the ceiling, to the bare concrete beams between which hung tatters of plastic sheeting.
Then, with ease, he slightly bent his knees and tossed the child upward. Not hard. Not with all his might. But exactly as one throws a basketball, so that it describes a high arc and lands precisely in the hoop.
Baby Chang Mi, without even having time to cry out, flew up into the damp, cold air. His tiny body, wrapped in blue, hung for a moment at the highest point, almost touching a ceiling beam. And then plummeted down.
The sound was not loud. A dull, wet thud, like a ripe melon falling to the ground. The little body hit the concrete floor covered in plastic, bounced, rolled over, and lay still. For a moment, silence reigned. Then from under the head, from under the fine, light hair, slowly, unhurriedly, a dark puddle began to spread. It spread over the transparent sheeting, branched into scarlet streams, reflecting the shimmering moonlight.
"Chang Mi!!!" Chang Wo's cry was no longer a cry, but some kind of animal roar torn from the very depths of a shattered soul. His wife did not scream. She simply stared, her eyes wide open, from which endless tears flowed, and her mouth agape in a silent moan.
Ming You did not stop there. He walked over to the small, motionless body and stopped over it. His shadow covered the child. He looked down for a few seconds, as if pondering. Then he raised his foot. He was wearing ordinary sneakers, the soles with a fine pattern, dried clumps of dirt at the edges.
The blow was not furious, but methodical. He took aim and stomped down. The sneaker, with a dull, squelching sound, crashed into the infant's chest. The crunch was disgusting—not loud, but somehow internal, wet, as if it wasn't bones breaking, but ligaments of wet cartilage. The little body jerked, a scarlet stream spurted from the torn skin on the chest, hitting Ming You's pant leg.
"AAAH!!!" Chang Wo shut his eyes, turned away, but he couldn't not hear. He couldn't not hear that vile, squelching sound, repeating again and again.