Chapter. 10 Lead and Silver Coin (34)
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Grumble-
“….Orpheus or something, he was such a fucking bastard. “My head almost exploded.”
Ian muttered quietly as he wiped the blood flowing from one ear. It was good to jump in among the snipers and have fun fighting, but since they stuck to the slope of the valley and did not respond until they ran out of bullets, they did not do much damage despite their grand appearance. He caught his attention and stopped the sniping aimed at the garrison… but thanks to that, all the guns turned towards him.
It took about ten minutes for me to enter the dented truck bed that I had driven out of with great force and be hit by ricochets raining down on the bulletproof panel. No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn’t come up with a method as strange as that guy’s, so I thought he was half-dead and was about to rush forward –
keeeeeeeeeek-!!!!
A strange sound and light spread out from beyond the rocky valley, paralyzing his thoughts.
When he opened his eyes, what filled his vision was the burned, shattered corpses that filled the wide plains, and that of his wife, nailed to a wooden beam atop the mountain of corpses.
It’s a familiar sight. It was a fantasy I saw several times a day when I was living as a madman after losing my wife. In those days, I carried a small pocket knife with me and cut my thighs every time I had a vision. Old Master Woojin, seeing the cuts growing over the stitches without even having a chance to form a scar, used to threaten me that if I kept doing this, he would put iron plates on my thighs as well.
Sadly, he was naked in the grave, and the gun and knife he always carried with him were not by his side. From what he remembers, if this happens, there is only one way out of the fantasy.
A scarred man walked up stairs made of bone and intestines to his hanging wife.
There were clear signs of torture on his hands and toes, and his face was swollen beyond recognition from being beaten. Ian, who was frozen in place as if nailed by that cruel sight, could not stop his longing for her from welling up.
“…Molly.”
“…This…Ah….”
The woman hanging on the pillar raises her head and opens her mouth. There is no tip of the tongue. Of course, he had never seen anything like that, but he had seen her before she died. The blood stains around his mouth were enough to give the surviving Ian terrible thoughts every day. The pain that a good and weak woman suffered was enough to kill herself at the hands of the Dome’s thugs. Just because you were with me. I can’t believe I met a more terrible end than anyone else just because I was faithful to my heart.
“…I missed you.”
Snap. Snap.
Ian couldn’t stop approaching his wife. Even if it is such a cruel sight. Even though he knew how it would end, his emotions were moving him to the point where he couldn’t control himself.
“A world without you… is still boring. It’s just full of black and gray and I don’t feel like I’m alive. If you saw your old self, you did so many strange things that you would think you were a different person. You can jump into armed enemies alone with a shotgun, or even explode a Cremoire right in front of their noses. I drank strong alcohol until I thought I was dead, and I smoked cigarettes until I forgot my name. If you do that, the colorless world seems a little more alive. Ian Desmontrani, an impulsive disorder addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. “If I confess to you now, I might get slapped right away.”
What would Molly say if she saw his life as Metal Joe?
‘What can I say? She would be wearing the white nurse’s skirt that reached down to her calves, which she wore on the street, with her hands on her hips, her eyes wide open, and yelling, “What are you doing!” ‘Whether it’s a handsome man or a rough man with a beard and his entire chin shaved off.’
“Hehehe…. That would be worth seeing as it is….”
Snap.
I finally reached her feet. Two small feet that look like they could be held in one hand, clearly showing signs of being beaten with all kinds of tools.
“But these days… yeah. It can be said that the level of light and dark can be distinguished. I found a guy who wasn’t very boring. Manly. He also has spirit. “More than anything, he’s just as crazy as me.”
Even as he spoke, his body was steadily approaching his wife according to the scenes in his memory. Those little feet nailed to a wooden beam. I just want to wrap those cold, cold feet like a corpse.
“I missed you so much. “I still love you like the day we met, Molly.”
The moment his hand touches his wife’s feet.
Whoops –
his wife explodes into pieces and falls among the piles of corpses. Some of it scattered over him.
The steel man’s heart crumbles in his wife’s bloody embrace, and hell descends upon him. It’s so unbearable that he wants to gouge out his own eyeballs, but the nightmare isn’t over yet and he has a little more to go.
The wooden beam my wife was hanging on. A small fire is burning underneath it. The form of a child, carbonized to pitch black.
“Leonie….”
My hell. My frame that I created.
My beloved child. I wanted to give you more love than anyone else. The days I spent with you were so short.
His nightmare is completed by holding that small pile of charcoal to his chest. The fallen corpses rise up and rush at him with all their might.
He couldn’t handle even the deaths of just two people for the rest of his life, but he killed so many people that it formed a mountain. How on earth can I pay for that sin?
With pain rising from head to toe, he looked at his daughter, who was left behind. My daughter crumbled to ashes in my hands. What was left inside was a small white two-shot pistol.
His final refuge. A keepsake from my wife that made me think ‘one more time’ every time I thought of suicide.
Ian quietly raised the muzzle of his gun to his temple as the dead came towards him like a wave.
If I get buried in memories like this. Maybe I could be with her forever, at least in this cruel fantasy. That fact was as tempting as it was devastating.
“…Take care of Leonie. my love.”
Taaaang!
The man’s body collapsed with a single gunshot. He never. No matter what happened, I had no intention of dying.
Although he was not religious, he firmly believed that there would be a heaven prepared for his wife and daughter, and a hell prepared for someone like him.
Isn’t the distance between this world and heaven at least closer than the distance between heaven and hell?
He never intended to be away from his family again. That’s why I didn’t plan on dying.
****
Ian returned to reality after enduring hundreds of nightmares. I guess the blood was rushing to my head while I was unconscious, so if I keep going like this, it’s a lie! When he felt like he was going to explode, Ian wasted no time piercing his ear with his finger and rupturing his eardrum.
Pow!
“Keuuuuuuu!”
It was a ridiculous idea that the pressure would be relieved if I just drilled a hole, but I felt a sharp pain and my brain, which had been boiling over, gradually returning to normal.
‘My physical condition… has become a complete mess. There was no special trauma, but my body froze as if I had been tortured by electricity.’
A weapon that neither shoots nor explodes, but can kill such a wide range of people in the most shitty way in the world. How can it be possible that Idaji has all these fucking weapons? If it were in front of me, I didn’t like it enough to want to beat it until it was reduced to scrap metal and then explode it with a pile of C4.
With trembling hands, I took out the mirror and looked outside, but I didn’t hear any sharp gunshots or the sound of nervous breathing. but. Although they were exposed to a weapon that could squeeze people like that, the snipers lying down outside must have been affected more than those in the truck bed. Both he and the snipers were using high-level personal shields at maximum power, but Ian almost died, so unless he was a very courageous person, everyone would have died. It was a terrible feeling, to the point of death, but thanks to that, all of my enemies died and my life was saved, so maybe it was a good thing…
Taang!
Crispy!
“…. Not everyone is dead. One guy. Then, as soon as you see it, it must be him.”
Ian grumbled as he saw his hands covered in broken mirror shards and took out a pistol from its holster.
Smith & Wesson 44 Magnum revolver. Just before leaving, Professor Park and Bex were nagging me like mothers-in-law, so I took the pistol with me.
‘For me, using magnum bullets was the best compromise, but if I had known it would be like this, I would have chosen someone who was more gay and snobby and accurate.’
The weight of the shotgun on my back felt like a ton of weight in my arms, so the only thing I could aim and shoot with was a pistol that weighed less. Of course, I had a lighter one in my arms… but it’s too precious to use right now. It’s for me.
After taking a deep breath for a moment, Ian kicked down the half-tattered door and flew away. My goal was to find rock cover in front of the cargo bay door, but my legs didn’t listen and I ended up rolling on the ground miserably. Fortunately, the opponent was not in good condition either, so the shot missed badly.
“The air… is so disgusting.”
There was no need to find the cause of my stomach-churning frustration. A strange noise that for a moment plunged him into an old nightmare. A strange light was flashing from a strange stone altar whose origin was clearly evident.
Peeing! Crispy!
Before he knew it, the bullets, which had been flying in a foolish direction, began to fly straight towards the rock where he was hiding.
“Mikhail Pletnev… I’m still amazed at the shooting. “I thought you were just sniping, but when did you get a pistol?”
“I used the original pistol for the longest time. “Before the war, I worked as a police officer.”
“Hey, you’re a police officer whose specialty is blowing people’s heads off! “If the people who died because of you find out, they’ll be upset!”
“Not really. “I died because I deserved to die, so my work remains the same as before.”
Mikhail Pletnev. He was a police officer who was commonly referred to as ‘falling out of promotion’.
‘Mikhail. ‘Why did you kill him?’
‘He was a criminal wanted for two counts of robbery with murder, five counts of assault and seven counts of aggravated theft and he was reaching for a gun.’
‘therefore! From the beginning, I didn’t tell you to make a deal with him instead of opposing him! Our plan was to find out the trading route and base of the gang he belonged to in exchange for releasing him, but when they started handcuffing us, he went crazy because he thought he had been tricked!’
‘If he is released…who will pay for his sins and how?’
‘Such a damn idiot… If he pretends to be just and pulls in such details. Who is going to grab the head? Can’t you calculate it? Even if you catch just one drug dealer, many times more people will be saved than if you catch that little bastard, but this is wrong! uh!’
‘yes.’
Mikhail Pletnev answered that without a moment of hesitation. The world was so complicated that his mind couldn’t understand it all, and people were intertwined. This was especially true in police work, where crime and victims’ resentment were intertwined.
He was a simple man. If you commit a sin, you will pay for it. Considering all the context and entangled circumstances, no one could have been arrested. They just arrest the criminals they see one by one in order.
Even when he goes into prison outside of the chief’s eyes and strangles criminals.
Even when he pointed a gun at the head of a commander who was trying to defect after selling out his allies during the war.
He remained the same even when he set fire to the meeting room of the leadership plotting the massacre of civilians.
A fair price for those who commit sins.
Even when his close friend Alexander Young created a group called Dome, he wanted to become a police officer to monitor them and put his name on the executive branch.
Alexander Young. If the world were full of such leaders, my simple definition would be easier. Unlike himself, who turned his eyes away from the complexity of the world, he was a person who faced it all and tried to find justice in the face of it all. Mikhail had the same amount of friendship and respect for him that he still felt for him.
That’s why I had no choice but to betray. Alexander Young was a much greater and more necessary being in the world, unlike a dog that chases after a bone or raises its muzzle when it sees a criminal. If he valued his life and the life of his close friend, he would place his life above his own without hesitation.
Teueuung-!
Kwasik!
As he watched the rock being chipped away with a gunshot that could not be attributed to a pistol, Mikhail noticed that Ian wanted to engage in close combat.
“Ashfield. The moment I first saw you. “I thought that no matter what happens, you should not be left behind in this world.”
Because you lost your subordinates? Countless civilians burned alive at the touch of his hand?
no. There was a more important reason than that.
Those cold eyes. Mikhail noticed the businesslike attitude of doing all these things without feeling the slightest guilt or the joy of a madman. If there were pure evil, it would be something like that. At least as far as condemning the author, his simple definition and the complex definition of the world will be consistent.
How many times did I cross the battlefield between Dom and Raptor and feel helpless at his slaughter? Suddenly the devil disappeared and Mikhail became furious and ran wild like a madman.
He punished both struggling criminals and criminals who swore revenge within the bounds of the law he knew, but with one exception, he would kill them all without any mercy.
A criminal who sincerely regrets his sins and asks for forgiveness.
Forgiving oneself and becoming comfortable with one’s own meager standards before paying for one’s sins is not an escape, but what is it? He hurriedly killed them before they could really relieve their burden.
Click, peeing-!
‘Second before 11 o’clock. No, is it a rock right in front of nine o’clock? ‘I can’t see any movement or traces.’
I pulled out a grenade and tried to correct my shaking vision, but my head was so damaged that my vision was constantly shaking and I couldn’t focus.
Whiik-
Quaaaaang!
Through the explosion and flying debris, the sound of quickly approaching footsteps was heard.
‘this. Was it nine o’clock?’
Cheolker-
Quaduk!
Unfortunately, the heavy military boot stepped on his wrist faster than the speed at which he turned the muzzle.
A man with a face filled with half metal and a muscular body, completely different from the sleek and cold-hearted man in his memories.
“Ashfield. “You… have changed too much.”
“Tueet! They say even rivers and mountains change in 10 years. For a person made of flesh and blood, five years is enough. You haven’t changed at all. Wall windows. I thought that if I worked with Dom, there would be days when I would be shoulder to shoulder with you. “It seems like the only thing we can prepare for each other, then or now, is lead bullets.”
Ian’s condition, as Mikhail saw it, was almost no different from his. My ears were bleeding and my legs were throbbing from fragments of a grenade that exploded at close range.
Even though he looked like he was going to collapse at any moment, his tone of voice was relaxed and there was a smile on his lips.
A devil who has become a new person, as if he has buried his past.
Mikhail couldn’t stand it.
When news of BDSM first spread in the community, he didn’t even recognize it. It was just that the name Ian caught my eye and I was gathering news without even realizing it.
Even when they were revered as heroes of the Dom and their preferred fighting style and appearance were posted one after another in the community, Mikhail, uncharacteristically, chose to ignore the ominous feeling of déjà vu. That can’t be possible. There was no way Alexander Young would praise the worst murderer of our time as the protector of his city.
For several months, I managed to dismiss my memories of Ashfield as a delusion. When I heard the news that they had arrived in Area 38, I went to see him in the middle of the night and confronted him. Although his appearance had completely changed, Mikhail was unable to give up his beliefs when he faced those deep blue eyes filled with coldness.
I had no intention of blaming Young. He is the one who has found better justice than Michael himself in every way. It was just that the police had gone astray and made a big mistake this time.
“You can commit more sins. Even if I hid from the past to avoid it, I would understand. But you… shouldn’t you be at least as good as you are?”
Crash.
said Mikhail as the revolver was drawn and a lead bullet faced him inside the silver barrel.
“No matter how many people you save. No matter how many people you spread happiness to, your sins will not go away before you pay the price. If those who have sinned forgive themselves and become good. Who should bear the resentment and pain of the dead and their relatives? Who and what in the world gave you the right to deny the suffering of victims!”
Cough! Cough!
Ian looked down at Mikhail, who was staggering, pointing the gun and coughing up blood. As if I was seeing some kind of illusion, I saw a broken leg that had been crushed to pieces and a temple where a bullet had passed through, leaving a clear mark of gunpowder.
The bridge was easy to tell who did it. Because there was a stone the size of a bloody fist next to Mikhail. The temple… it looked like he had opened the muzzle of a gun just before committing suicide.
‘I was wondering why a sniper with no one to compare with couldn’t widen the distance. Even if I just left it alone, it would have died.’
His blood was flowing down the hill in a small stream. With that body. A man who vents his anger without wavering even when faced with death.
“You guy… hehe. okay. “He was like this.”
If you ask me what kind of guy he is…. he’s a frustratingly good guy. So, it’s not that they hate me or anything, but if I become a good person, the people who should blame me get angry and protest, asking what they should do. Could this be the feeling of a bereaved family who saw their father’s enemy become a pastor of a church in a remote village and live in repentance? Anger that is so upright that there is no answer. He doesn’t think that way because of his beliefs, he just feels that way. A guy named Mikhail Pletnev.
Of course, since he was now an enemy, I had to blow off his head right away and go find the remaining friends who were dead or in the process of becoming dead, but the trigger was so heavy that I couldn’t pull it until Iando vomited out the words inside.
“…To clear up any misunderstandings on the way to the end, I am still a bad guy even though I can only judge good and evil by your crazy standards. “He was a psychopath who killed people almost every day, and instead of feeling sorry for it, he rejoiced that he had made a lot of money.”
“….”
“Just a few days ago, I killed a lot of guys from the 38th district inspection department who were making a pretty hard living, and I killed a lot of people for public and personal reasons. So don’t worry about me going to heaven-”
“…I can’t pull it off.”
“hmm?”
“trigger. Is it heavy? Can you feel its weight? now? After all that massacre? “If this isn’t a reformation, what is it?”
“…Fuck.”
“….after. Hehehehe…. Hahahahahahaha!”
At that moment, Mikhail felt unbearable joy as he read the conflict and agony on Ian’s face.
“Oh my… you didn’t just forgive yourself for self-satisfaction. It wasn’t a pretense… it was really about being a good person. “Ashfield, you have changed so much that it is disgusting.”
There were days when his simple justice matched the principles of the world. The punishment given to Ian Desmont was not something like dying in resentment as a criminal. Without realizing it, I have become a good person and am being chased by the sins of the past, feeling the weight of that over and over again among the countless people I will kill in the future. Mikhail couldn’t hold back his laughter as he thought about how much pain and guilt he would be struggling with for the rest of his life. His death will also become his pain and condemn him in his memory.
“Shoot.”
“…Fuck. I’ve never done anything like this in my life and I only say it once. Think about it one more time. “If I kill someone like you, the dream will become violent.”
“Hehehe…. Cough! ….If you don’t shoot, I will shoot.”
click!
Drop…. Drop….
A hand that was too weak to even lift the muzzle lifted the Beretta from the pool of blood.
“Shit! I don’t want to kill people like you! Later, when I go to hell, what will I say if the Reaper asks me why I killed a rare good man like [Mikhail Pletnev]! uh! “There are already sins on earth that need to be paid for!”
“….137 murders, 569 murders, 2895 illegal detentions, 391 assaults, and 1 manslaughter. It would be enough to say that I carried out the sentence on behalf of you lazy people….”
He was at his limit. . His contradictions. For neglecting Michael Pletnev, a murderer who betrayed his own beliefs to protect them. His liberation from the complex world has finally arrived.
“…Put the gun down.”
“As you live… you will constantly be chased by the past…”
“Put the gun down.”
“I feel grateful to be a part of life’s punishment….”
“Put the gun down! You son of a bitch! “You’re going to die anyway, so just search around alone!”
Flutter…. Snap.
“I hope that you will not be happy for a single day of the rest of your life. Ashfield.”
“Oh my… you idiot!!!!”
Taaaaang –
A gunshot rang out.
A man bound by the past died, and a man carrying a lot of past lived.
“….God…. God damn you, God…. If you have a conscience, please let me have one cigarette…. Please….”
Ian sat down next to the corpse and entered the fierce battle again. He fumbled for the missing cigarette pack and let out a deep sigh.
In the distance, over a hill, a group of vehicles armed with all kinds of strange equipment could be seen approaching the battlefield.
Mark of District 38 Administration. It must have been prepared against radiation and strange weapons, so it appeared with a lot of stuff on it.
Just as the sun sets, the damn thing’s light disappears at this very moment.
“You came at a timing worse than the cavalry in a western or the ending cops in a Hollywood movie…”
Ian lost consciousness as he finally broke the signal stick in his pocket and lit it.
I was really tired now. I had finished everything I had to do, so I just wanted to go home and have a snack like Ezel said.
****
