Savior Proto-Call Chapter 5

Chapter 5. No Longer Human (5)

"YOU FUCKING BITCH! WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR FATHER?! DID THAT BASTARD RUN OFF TO GET DRUNK AGAIN AFTER SWINDLING PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR MONEY?!"

The man's words reeked of something rotten.

Even though he knew perfectly well that his anger was directed at the wrong person, he continued hurling it at her without hesitation.

Before Yoon Doha could even frown at his vile words, a sickening crack rang out as the flesh inside her mouth split open.

Her head snapped violently to the side, almost as though her neck had been broken.

Blood quickly pooled in her mouth.

She neither swallowed it nor spat it out.

Instead, she simply allowed it to trickle from the corners of her lips as she glared at the man with undisguised hatred.

He reminded her of mold growing beneath a filthy, long-forgotten cloth soaked in years of accumulated filth.

A human being she didn't even want to call her father.

It was perfectly reasonable for someone to be angry that the man she refused to acknowledge as her father had borrowed money from loan sharks and failed to repay it.

But taking that anger out on her was cowardly.

"...How the hell am I supposed to know? Whether that bastard is out drinking somewhere again, gambled away the house, or crawled off somewhere and died, what does any of that have to do with me—"

"YOU FUCKING BITCH! WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH YOU?! HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW?! IF HIS OWN FUCKING DAUGHTER DOESN'T KNOW, THEN WHO DOES?! HUH?! YOU LITTLE SHIT, YOU KEEP TALKING BACK! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU LEARN TO BE SO DISRESPECTFUL?! I'VE BEEN GOING EASY ON YOU ALL THIS TIME, AND NOW ALL I SEE IN THOSE EYES IS MORE AND MORE DEFIANCE!"

The man's hand flew toward her face again.

He didn't regard the person standing before him as a human being, so he struck her without restraint.

Yoon Doha simply endured it in silence.

She seemed to be sinking slowly into a swamp, making no attempt to struggle.

Yet within her dark eyes, the wounds accumulated over many years remained as vivid as branded scars.

"If your father can't pay his debts, then his fucking daughter should pay them for him! You seem to be misunderstanding something. Selling you off would be the easiest thing in the world. YOU UNDERSTAND?! DO YOU?! Maybe once someone cuts out one of your organs, you'll finally bring your father to me!"

The man's gaze was as repulsive as the damp, fishy stench rising from a sewer.

He drove the hard toe of his shoe into her shin.

Caught completely off guard, Yoon Doha pitched forward.

Her kneecap struck the floor before she could brace herself, sending a deep ache through the bone as though it had cracked.

Ah.

That's the same place that bastard injured last time.

Then the kicks began raining down on her hunched, defenseless back.

All she could see were drops of blood falling from her nose onto the yellowed flooring, along with the dirty footprints left by the man's shoes.

Shoes he'd carelessly worn inside the house.

But Yoon Doha herself wasn't truly there.

More precisely, her mind was somewhere else entirely.

Even when blood collected at the base of her tongue and forced her to cough, even when her spine was bent at an angle it was never meant to endure, even when her skin felt as though it were being torn apart—

The violence unfolding around her wasn't what occupied her thoughts.

Once I enter the Salvation Academy, I can finally say goodbye to this godforsaken house.

That was all.

Nothing else mattered.

Her thoughts lingered on the awakening that had been officially confirmed a few days earlier.

Yoon Doha viewed her awakening positively.

Why?

She had more reasons than she could count.

Her family's financial situation was so miserable that even paying the water bill was difficult, let alone eating three meals a day.

Attending a college entrance exam prep academy was out of the question.

Even replacing the writing supplies she used up every day was a financial burden.

Her father spent every last bit of the family's money on gambling and alcohol.

He didn't spare so much as a glance for the daughter who had been working part-time without fail since middle school, desperately trying to contribute to the household.

And then there was her older sister.

Her sister was connected to medical equipment, and without medication and treatment, each passing day merely brought her closer to death.

As the young breadwinner of her family, Yoon Doha had spent every day struggling to survive.

But the debts and living expenses were far beyond anything a minor's part-time wages could cover.

Their household finances were like a half-destroyed ship listing dangerously to one side, sinking faster with every passing moment.

When Doha finished reflecting on her short life, the corners of her mouth rose for some inexplicable reason.

Her cheeks were swollen bright red.

The repeated blows had narrowed her already limited field of vision until it was little more than a slit.

A faint chuckle escaped her.

Blood-tinged saliva trickled endlessly from the torn corner of her mouth.

Does everyone live like this?

Or am I the only one who has to?

She didn't particularly want to find out.

So she simply laughed.

The soft sound of Yoon Doha's laughter, mingled with bloody phlegm, was strangely clear.

"YOU FUCKING BITCH, ARE YOU LAUGHING?! LAUGHING?! HEY, YOU CRAZY LITTLE SHIT! DO YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR SISTER GET THE SAME TREATMENT?! DO YOU WANT TO SEE HER TURNED INTO A FUCKING CRIPPLE?! YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOUR SISTER IS?! HUH?!"

Faced with threats and insults that stripped away her dignity, Doha's painfully thin body, covered in grotesque bruises, twitched intermittently.

But she didn't take the bait.

She already knew that man couldn't actually get to her older sister.

His threats were nothing more than desperate bluster.

The person she had truly resolved to protect had never been herself.

And so, during moments when her human rights were dragged into the gutter and trampled beyond recognition, she sometimes forgot how to be afraid.

It was as though a demon lurking in her subconscious were whispering into her ear.

How much further could you possibly fall?

Blood from the torn lining of her cheek pooled at the base of her tongue.

An ugly, wet rattling sound rose from her throat.

Then Yoon Doha spat the blood filling her mouth toward the man.

He was the one who had discarded all pretense of treating her like a human being.

He was the one who had struck her face without the slightest trace of guilt.

Yet when a few droplets of blood barely reached his waist, his face flushed red with humiliation.

One person was crawling across a filthy floor, covered in blood.

The other stood perfectly upright, with barely a drop of blood on his clothes.

And still, it was the latter who felt insulted.

Perhaps the notion of putting oneself in another person's shoes was nothing more than a comforting fantasy constructed by good people.

Because some forms of evil could never be corrected.

Ah, I'm so tired of this.

Those people made Yoon Doha's already exhausting life even more unbearable.

Then, one perfectly ordinary day, after the number of times she cried had noticeably decreased, an opportunity came knocking.

A government position as an ability user.

A job that offered both a pension and an exceptionally high salary.

Conditions tempting enough to make anyone take notice.

Who could possibly refuse something like that?

At the very least, Yoon Doha couldn't.

The price of the new medication needed to treat her older sister's illness was rising with every passing day.

For someone like Doha, who could do little more than move from one part-time job to another, accepting the opportunity was practically unavoidable.

Aside from the father whose very existence made her seethe with hatred, her older sister was the only family she had.

She couldn't simply stand by and let her die.

Yoon Doha remembered the first time she received the notice about the mandatory injection.

A neatly sealed white envelope had been placed inside the battered mailbox.

The mailbox was so old and worn that even stuffing a single piece of mail into it was difficult.

Yet the envelope was nothing like the usual advertisements or carelessly delivered yellowed utility bills that came without proper envelopes.

That day, Yoon Doha had just returned from working an eight-hour shift at a barbecue restaurant.

She had been forced to work until two in the morning, in blatant violation of all sorts of labor laws.

For some reason, she reached toward the mailbox.

Normally, she wouldn't even have bothered opening it, apart from retrieving the bills that were usually left sticking halfway out.

Her exhaustion was unbearable.

She felt as though her entire body had been drenched in meat grease and soju.

The fatigue seemed to have seeped into every tiny blood vessel, leaving her desperate to get home and wash herself with cold water.

And yet—

Something about the envelope caught her attention.

Inside the neglected metal mailbox, with its rusted surface and loose hinges, the envelope alone remained immaculately white.

Its pristine appearance seemed almost noble.

She reached inside with a hand marked by dark burns and covered in pain-relief patches.

Taking out the envelope, she turned it over roughly several times to examine it.

Fluid was still seeping from her fingertips where she'd recently suffered another burn.

A faint yellow stain spread across the envelope's surface like an afterimage.

Beneath it, two familiar logos were printed side by side near the upper-left corner.

One was a blue emblem featuring an eagle surrounded by blooming mugunghwa flowers.

The other was a pale emblem outlined in black, depicting a hooded hawk intertwined with a wolf wearing a leather harness.

Against the pure-white background, the two logos stood out like the only colors in an otherwise colorless world.

BUREAU OF SAVIOR MANAGEMENT

SALVATION AGENCY

They were names no citizen of twenty-first-century South Korea could possibly be unfamiliar with.

The Bureau of Savior Management was responsible for producing, training, and overseeing Saviors and Redeemers, those who destroyed Phantasms and exterminated Fragments.

The Salvation Agency, meanwhile, was where the Saviors and Redeemers trained under the Bureau carried out their missions.

Beneath her hair, damp and heavy with exhaustion, Yoon Doha's pitch-black gaze darkened.

Her face was so calm that it appeared almost devoid of emotion.

Yet beneath that lifeless expression, her pulse was pounding as though it might burst.

A road you can never turn back from once you set foot on it.

A destructive choice that places you on an irreversible path, one that might end in utter ruin.

And yet—

It was also an extreme choice between two possibilities, one of which might be her only hope of escaping her current suffering.

This is the salvation I've been given.

Yoon Doha wanted to believe that.

And so, when illegal debt collectors came to her home to collect her father's debts, turning the house into a scene of complete chaos and subjecting her to their familiar violence—

She simply pushed her painfully dislocated shoulder back into place with practiced movements.

Then she immediately submitted her application for the injection.

THWACK!

"Khack! C-cough! Ugh!"

A crushing impact rang out.

The man had stomped on the back of her neck.

Pain shot through her nerves, tightening them like wires, and Doha gasped desperately as though trying to breathe the agony out of her body.

The man behaved as though every ounce of malice in the world had been gathered into a single human being.

Only after grinding his foot down on her several more times did he finally announce the date of his next collection visit and leave.

Yoon Doha remained sprawled on the floor.

Her body twitched intermittently, like an earthworm abandoned on scorching asphalt in the middle of summer.

It wasn't until the sun had begun to set that she finally managed to lift her battered, swollen body.

A certain determination had settled into her pitch-black eyes.

What's the difference?

She could continue being beaten by loan sharks, failing to earn enough money to cover anything, until she eventually died from a cerebral hemorrhage or some other injury.

Or she could carry out missions as an ability user, receive reasonable compensation, and perhaps eventually die in battle.

There wasn't much difference between the two.

If anything, the latter was financially more advantageous.

To continue living, she needed material necessities.

And obtaining those necessities demanded sacrifices, even if those sacrifices meant risking her life.

Therefore, the value of her own life could never outweigh an opportunity to earn money.

At least, that was how Yoon Doha saw it.

Time passed more quickly than she could perceive.

Clutching her stomach as it repeatedly churned with seasickness, Yoon Doha finally stepped onto the dock.

The sea breeze of an April morning struck her cheeks.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the bruises on her face had faded considerably.

Whatever marks remained were securely concealed beneath thin, peach-colored bandages.

Thanks to them, her face looked as neat and unremarkable as ever.

Of course, her right knee still wasn't in particularly good condition.

Her balance remained slightly uneven, causing her posture to tilt subtly to one side.

The Salvation Academy was located here, on an artificial island constructed in the vast open sea approximately eighteen kilometers off the coast near Taean.

The reclaimed land had been designated a military protection zone.

Only authorized personnel were permitted to enter or leave, and access was restricted outside designated times.

As if to demonstrate the strictness of those regulations, the island's perimeter was densely surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences.

Yoon Doha had boarded a ferry earlier than the recommended departure time.

As a result, she arrived on Salvation Island completely alone, without encountering another person.