The night outside the basement walls was coming to an end. The sky in the east turned from coal-black to dark blue. A thin, cold stripe of pearly-gray light stretched along the horizon. The pre-dawn breeze, fresh and sharp, smelling of pollen and damp earth, hit his face, sharply contrasting with the atmosphere of the basement.
Ming You took a deep breath. The air burned his lungs with its purity. He carried the bags to the van. The rear doors were already open; inside the van lay other bags — with tools, spare plastic sheeting, jerry cans. He placed the two bags with remains neatly in the far corner, then returned to the basement.
After that, he brought out two more. Then — the bag with the belongings. And the last one — the lightest, but psychologically heavy, with what used to be faces, hands, feet, and with the bloodied gloves he had taken off and packed away.
He closed the basement door but didn't lock it. He walked over to the yard faucet with rusty water, turned it on, and washed his face and hands with icy, rusty water, scrubbing off dried crusts and stains from his skin. The water in the drain turned pink, then brown. He dried himself with a clean towel from the van.
And finally, he got behind the wheel. The seat was cool, familiar. He inserted the key into the ignition, then turned it. The van's engine coughed hoarsely, then rumbled to life with an even purr. The headlights snatched a piece of the broken road, a pile of trash, the pale trunk of a tree from the darkness.
Ming You looked in the rearview mirror. It reflected the black, faceless plastic bags piled in the corner. He shifted into first gear and released the clutch. The van smoothly pulled away, rolling out of the dead-end onto the deserted road. He drove slowly, obeying all traffic rules, his face illuminated by the dashboard lights impassive as a mask.
The first point — an abandoned construction site on the outskirts of another district. There stood huge, rusty construction waste containers, already half-filled with brick and plaster debris. He turned onto the broken dirt road leading to them. The headlights snatched mountains of junk and the first container from the gloom.
Stopping right next to it, he cut the engine. Ming You got out of the van and looked around. Not a soul. Opening the van's rear doors, the smell hit harder — a chemical bitterness and beneath it, the warm, meaty, organic contents. He took the first bag. The one with the belongings and the top plastic layer. It was relatively light, but something inside sloshed and rolled softly.
He quickly, almost silently, approached the edge of the container and threw the bag down. It flew, scraping the edges of the rusty metal, and landed at the bottom with a dull, soft thump. After it, the second bag — with the victims' belongings and bloodied clothes. The same journey, the same final thud.
He felt a certain relief when the second bag landed with a dull thud on top of the first. It was a physical sensation — lightness in his shoulders, as if part of an invisible weight had been lifted from them.
Ming Yu headed to the next container, in an old industrial park where waste from small workshops was dumped. It smelled of fuel oil and sour chemicals. He did the same thing. The second and third bags, the heaviest and bulkiest ones, those with the main remains, he threw into different containers, separated by two hundred meters.
He dragged them one by one, his muscles pleasantly aching from the effort. Each bag left a trail of that sweetish-nauseating smell in the air, which quickly dissipated in the dank air of the park. The bags also ended up inside, disappearing into the dark depths, and a heavy weight fell from his shoulders.
Ming You felt a light, pure satisfaction kindling inside him — not euphoria, but a calm, deep feeling of a job well done.
Finally, he dumped the other last two bags — with the smallest, "problematic" remains and entrails, thoroughly mixed with lime. For these, he chose a spot near an old sewage pumping station on the bank of a murky canal. It stank of silt and decay, and his bags merely added their own note to the general symphony of rot.
Finally, parking the van a few blocks from his house, he checked the time on his phone. It was 5:47 AM. In the east, the sky had turned lilac, with thin, pink clouds drifting across it. The city was waking up. Somewhere a door slammed, a first car started.
Ming You got out of the van, locked it, and scanned the interior — empty, clean. No hint of what had been transported here. He left everything behind — physically and mentally. Closing the van door, he headed home with the ordinary, slightly tired gait of a person who might have gone for an early jog or was returning from a night job. His shadow, long and thin in the slanting rays of the rising sun, stretched out behind him on the asphalt.
After a ten-minute walk, he entered the quiet, clean apartment. The first thing — the bathroom. He turned on the water, made it very hot, almost scalding. He took off all the clothes he was wearing and put them in a separate bag for later washing. Then he took a shower. He stood under the near-boiling streams, eyes closed, and scrubbed his skin with a rough washcloth and plenty of soap with a strong, disinfectant smell.
He scrubbed every fold, every nail, behind his ears, his scalp. The soapy foam running off his body down his legs into the drain was murky grey at first, then became clear. He washed for a long time and thoroughly, washing away not dirt, but the very fact of what had happened, erasing from himself the molecular traces of that basement. The water and steam cleansed, devalued, dissolved into nothing.
Drying himself thoroughly with a rough towel, he went to his room. In the closet hung an impeccably ironed school uniform. A white shirt, dark blue trousers, a neat black tie. He dressed slowly, with habitual care, buttoning every button, straightening every seam. The clothes smelled of freshness and ironing spray.
Finally, he approached the mirror in the hallway. His reflection looked back at him. Damp, neatly combed dark hair. An impeccable shirt. A calm, slightly tired, but utterly ordinary face of a top student. Not a shadow of tension, not a hint of adrenaline crash or vague pangs of conscience. Only clarity.
And then the corners of his lips twitched. Slowly, almost reluctantly, and then stretched wider and wider into a smile. It wasn't a smile of joy or triumph. It was something deeper and colder.
...
The noisy school corridor greeted him with the usual cacophony: laughter, conversations, and gossip. But this time, that cacophony seemed especially flat and false to Ming You, like a cheap stage set after that night's symphony of silence, crunching bones, and last gasps. The sound of voices grated on his ears like Styrofoam on glass.
With an indifferent, almost stony face, he strode forward as if moving through a crowd of ghosts. His hands, the very ones that just hours ago had been butchering human flesh, now rested calmly in his trouser pockets without a single trace of tension.
Ming You entered the Yoshido club locker room. The sharp smell of sweat, old rubber, and sports disinfectant hit his nose, but for him, it was a familiar, almost soothing smell — the smell of control. Inside, the atmosphere was far from light excitement. It was thick, nervous, saturated with withdrawal symptoms.
Jung Ho, usually a pillar of confidence, sat hunched on a bench. He was fidgeting with a ball, but his finger movements were jerky, almost spasmodic. His face was pale, with dark purple shadows under his eyes as if he'd been beaten up. He wasn't focused. He was wound tight as a wire, ready to snap at any sound.
Lu Shen, sitting on the cold tiled floor in a corner, had his forehead pressed to his knees. He just sat there, head in his hands, and his shoulders trembled slightly. His breathing was uneven. Haru Lin and Hong Ren were standing by the lockers. Haru Lin, usually the epitome of arrogant calm, was staring at the ceiling, but his gaze was empty and detached. He was biting his lip until it bled, not noticing. Hong Ren simply stood leaning against the metal locker doors, staring at a spot on the opposite wall. His face was inscrutable, but a barely perceptible grimace of suffering — not physical, but the kind that comes from within when a brain accustomed to chemical euphoria is suddenly left alone with a dull, grey reality — was frozen at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
"Hi-hi, everyone," Ming You began, his voice, even and emotionless, cutting through the heavy silence like a knife through butter.