Thud. Squelch. Crunch. Thud.
Each new kick was accompanied by a new, increasingly wet and pulverized sound. Chang Wo wasn't looking, but his mind, inflamed with horror, painted the picture: the tender skin tearing, the thin, matchstick-like ribs breaking, the warm, soft innards forced out under the pressure of the coarse sole.
Chang Yeon, his wife, was watching. Her consciousness, already teetering on the edge, couldn't process it. She saw the foot of Chang Wo's former student descending and rising mechanically. She saw dark, shapeless pieces separating from the child. She saw Ming You's sneakers gradually becoming sticky, crimson-black. Her body began to thrash in a quiet, chaotic spasm. Foam, mixed with saliva and bile, erupted from her mouth. She wasn't screaming anymore. She was just shaking, her eyes rolling back to show the whites, her body arching in an unnatural curve, constrained by the ropes and convulsions.
When Ming You finally stopped, what remained of the child was something shapeless. Not a body, not a corpse. Just a mass. A lump of meat, smeared across the plastic, mixed with shreds of the onesie's fabric and dark, fibrous clots. A heavy, coppery smell of blood and something sweetly-sour, intestinal, hung in the air.
Ming You bent down, scooped up a handful of this warm, sticky mass. It oozed between his fingers, dripped onto the plastic on the floor. He walked over to Chang Wo, who lay with his forehead pressed against the cold pillar, his body wracked by violent tremors.
"So, Chang Wo, did I make the throw correctly?" Ming You asked in his even, colorless voice. He twisted the bloody handful in front of the coach's face, like a chef displaying an ingredient. "Oh, right. You can't use your feet in basketball. Darn, what a blunder."
He feigned an exaggerated, caricatured regret on his face. Then, without changing his expression, he hurled that bloody mush right into Chang Wo's face.
The warm, sticky, indescribably foul mass hit his forehead, flooded his eyes, clogged his mouth. The smell—metallic, salty, with notes of feces and gastric acid—invaded his nostrils and struck straight into his brain. Chang Wo didn't even have time to react before his stomach, already clenched in a spasm of terror, turned inside out.
He vomited convulsively, profusely, all over himself. A yellowish-brown slurry with bits of undigested food gushed onto his chest, his trousers, mixing with his son's blood on his face. He choked, coughed, blinded by vomit and tears, trying to spit the filth from his mouth, but there was too much. He vomited again and again until only bitter bile came from his throat. His body went limp, he hung from the ropes, sobbing silently, eyes closed, his face transformed into a mask of dirt, blood, and his own bodily waste.
Opposite him, his wife Chang Yeon was no longer convulsing. She was trembling with a fine, incessant shiver, as if she'd been placed in icy water. Saliva mixed with foam dripped from her slightly open mouth, her eyes were glazed, staring into nothingness. Her consciousness, unable to bear the strain, had retreated, leaving only the body's autonomic functions, which were also failing.
Ming You watched them, wiping his bloody hand on his pants. His face showed neither satisfaction nor disgust. There was only concentration.
"I feel like I've forgotten someone…" he muttered, turning. His gaze fell on the tied-up girl. Chang Su Yeon. The twelve-year-old daughter. She was still unconscious, her head hanging limply on her chest. "Ah, right. Your daughter. And she's… attractive. Heh-heh."
He took a few steps and stopped before her. With his bloody hand, he reached out and stroked the back of his fingers across her cheek. A scarlet, coarse mark was left on her pale, almost translucent child's skin.
"N-no…" a hoarse whisper escaped Chang Wo. He forced himself to open his eyes, seeing through the veil of filth and tears Ming You's hand touching his daughter. "P-please… don't…"
Ming You looked at him. His gaze was as empty as ever.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to rape her," he said with a light, almost intellectual intonation. "At least, not with my body."
He shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out not a knife, but large, steel scissors. Ordinary household scissors with black plastic handles. He clicked them in the air. The sound was sharp, metallic.
"S-stop… aah… aahAAAA!!! STOP!" Chang Wo found the strength to scream, thrashing in the ropes, but it was useless.
Ming You turned to the girl. He didn't lift her school skirt. Instead, he deftly, almost professionally, hooked the elastic of her panties with his thumb and pulled them down to her ankles. The thin cotton fabric hung from her bound legs. Then he opened the blades of the scissors and slowly, with slight pressure, inserted them under her skirt, into the dark space between her thighs.
Chang Su Yeon, still unconscious, didn't feel the first touch of the cold steel. But when the tip of one blade pressed against the entrance to her vagina, and the other—lower down—her body instinctively jerked. Her eyelids fluttered sharply.
Ming You felt resistance. He pressed harder. The blades, sharp and merciless, began to enter the flesh. At first, it was just pressure. Then—tearing.
The girl regained consciousness not from a scream, but from pain. A dull, rending, monstrous pain where, at her age, there should be none. Her eyes flew open. They met the empty gaze of Ming You, leaning over her. Incomprehension. Shock. And then—realization. It came not as a thought, but as a physical sensation—the feeling that inside her, in the most intimate, most vulnerable place, was something cold, iron, and alien, tearing her apart.
The scissors went in deep, all the way to the base, to the metal screw holding the blades together. Ming You felt his fingers merging with the plastic handles. His knuckles turned white from the strain. He took a deep breath.
And closed the blades.
The crunch was horrifying. It wasn't a bone crunch. It was the sound of tearing flesh, of muscle fibers. The sound of two steel blades meeting inside a human body, cutting, crushing, destroying everything in their path.
For a moment, silence reigned. Then a torrent gushed from under the girl's skirt. Not just blood. A dark, scarlet river, mixed with other, darker secretions. It splashed onto the floor, onto Ming You's legs, flooded the plastic beneath her. The skirt instantly became saturated, turned black, and clung to her thighs.
And then the scream finally erupted.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"
It was not a human scream. It was the sound of a soul being torn apart, a shriek of pure, unadulterated agony, of physical torment turned inside out. A scream that made the air tremble and seemed to shake plaster from the distant walls.
Chang Su Yeon's body arched in an unnatural, nightmarish curve. The ropes bit into her flesh but couldn't restrain the convulsive spasms. Her hands, twisted behind her back, turned so that it seemed the bones would pop out of the joints. Her legs kicked, scraping skin against the concrete pillar.
From her mouth, besides the continuous howl, vomit gushed—yellow, green, with pieces of dinner, then just water, then foam. Foam bubbled out, mixed with saliva and blood, dripped from her chin onto her chest. Her bladder and bowels emptied involuntarily, adding new shades of stench and horror to the pool beneath her.
She wasn't screaming words. She was just screaming. One long, endless, rasping shriek, interrupted only by convulsive sobs and retching spasms. Her eyes rolled back so far that only the bloody whites, studded with burst vessels, were visible.
Ming You pulled out the scissors. They came out with resistance, with a disgusting, oozing sound. The blades were dark red, gleaming. He looked at them, then at the girl writhing in agony, then at the coach.
Chang Wo wasn't screaming. He was watching. He saw everything. He saw his daughter, his little Su Yeon, being torn apart. He saw that pool of blood, urine, feces, and vomit growing beneath her. He saw her face, contorted with a pain he couldn't even conceive of. His own body stopped obeying him. He just hung from the ropes, mouth open, saliva silently dripping out. His mind, already poisoned by his son's death, now simply… shut down. There was nothing in his eyes. No rage, no fear, no pain. Emptiness. Complete, final, dead emptiness. He had turned into a vegetable, a shell from which the soul had fled, unable to bear the spectacle before him.
Chang Yeon, the wife, was no longer trembling. She had quieted. Her eyes were open and looking at her daughter, but there was no awareness in them. To survive, her brain had simply severed the connection. She had sunk into a catatonic stupor.
Ming You stepped back, threw the bloody scissors onto the floor with a metallic clatter. He walked around the plastic perimeter, inspecting his work. The coach—broken, empty. The wife—destroyed, switched off. The daughter—dying in unimaginable torment, her screams already growing quieter, hoarser, turning into a gurgling moan. The son… the son was no more. There was only a dark, sticky mass smeared across the sheeting.
Ming You nodded to himself in satisfaction, then walked over to his backpack, took out a bottle of water, took a sip, and wiped his mouth. Then he began preparing for the next stage. The cleanup. To make this place, these pillars, this plastic with its horrific contents, become just empty space in an abandoned building again.
And in the center of his masterpiece, in the center of this hell made by human hands, a girl named Chang Su Yeon continued to wheeze quietly, choking on her own blood. Her life slowly, agonizingly, drained into the dirty puddle on the floor, under the indifferent gaze of the one who had once been on her father's team. And under the glassy stare of the father himself, who was no longer a father, a husband, or a coach. He was simply nothing.