In the city of Yanghza, the capital of Kouzho, the largest kingdom of that era, night was falling. The sun had set half an hour ago and dusk was fast approaching. In the Eastern suburb of Yanghza, the late night market had begun their activity. People milled about the district aimlessly, only a small portion actively looking to buy products. The noise of the merchants shouting to advertise their products to the passers-by drowned any other sound in the congested streets.
Hazan walked through the crowd, gently nudging aside people to cut a path through the mass for himself. He paused by a cart to inspect the red ulantas on sale. However, they weren’t ripe so he moved on, ignoring the merchant’s plea to reduce the price for him.
“Sir? A coin for a poor beggar sir? Please sir?”
Hazan looked down to see a small boy tug at his tunic. He stopped and knelt down so that he could be at eye level with the child.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
The boy nodded.
“Come with me,” Hazan said. He walked and the boy followed until they both reached outside a bakery. A sweet smell of honey glazed on freshly baked breads emanated from inside; Hazan could see the boy swallow his spit at the sight of the breads on display.
“Wait here,” he said and entered the bakery. It was a small shop and the smell was even stronger here. It was hotter inside too. Hazan could see an apprentice place a tray of dough to be baked inside a clay oven.
“Welcome good sir!” the baker said with a bow as he noticed Hazan. He was a short man with a thin moustache, head full of thick hair, and a large belly. “How may I help you today?”
“How much for the bread?” Hazan asked, pointing to a loaf of steaming bread on a shelf.
“A loaf is forty neys. Three loaves for a hundred.”
“I’ll take three, thank you.”
The baker yelled at his apprentice to wrap up three loaves of bread in paper immediately while. Hazan meanwhile stole a glance out the door. The boy was still there, his feet shuffling nervously but anticipation bright in his eyes. In contrast to the baker, the boy was thin and bony. His collarbones protruded from below his neck and Hazan could see that his eyes had sunk in. The boy was clearly malnourished. Hazan wondered when the last time the poor soul had eaten a proper meal was.
“Here you go my good sir!” the baker said, handing the large parcelled bread to him. Hazan could feel the warmth of the bread through the layers of paper.
Hazan fished in his pocket for money. He handed the coin marked a hundred to the baker who pocketed it with a big smile.
“Thank you for your business good sir! Have a nice day!”
Waving to acknowledge the baker’s greetings, Hazan walked outside. He knelt down and thrust the three loaves of bread into the child’s arms.
“Here you go,” he said with a warm smile.
“I … I …” the boy stuttered.
“Now go and eat what you can. Give the rest to your family,” Hazan said. He patted the boy’s head and gently nudged him away. He watched as the boy trotted away happily, the three loaves clutched tightly in his hands.
His smile quickly turned into a frown when he noticed two hooded figures break away from a nearby crowd and start walking after the boy. Tall and lanky, those two were definitely following the boy.
Without hesitation, he started walking after those two. It was an easy task, following those two. They were so engrossed in following the boy that they never noticed Hazan walking close behind them, taking the same turns they took and keeping pace.
They had walked quite some distance and were at the outskirts of the market where the crowd was thin when one of the two figures leapt forward and grabbed the boy by the shoulders. Before he knew it, the boy found himself pinned to a wall inside a dark alley. The three loaves he had been carrying fell to the ground.
“Pick that up Reying,” the figure pinning the boy to the wall said. Hazan realized that the speaker was a woman. He watched them quietly from the shadows outside the alley.
“Just bread,” Reying commented, holding up the three packaged loaves.
“Where’s the money Fing?” asked the woman again.
“I … I don’t have any,” the boy, Fing, stuttered.
“Hundred neys. That’s all we ask for. Hundred neys a day you pay us and keep the rest for yourself. Is that so hard?” asked the woman. “Instead, I see you accepting bread.”
“Th-those breads are worth a hundred neys,” Fing answered in a meek tone.
“We want coins, not breads!” the woman almost shouted. “Hui has no problem paying us her daily due.”
“People pity her more because she is blind in one eye.” Fing was sobbing now.
“Is that so? Then perhaps if you were blinded in one eye …” The woman’s eye glinted maliciously in the little light that fell on her face from a nearby street lamp. Fear dawned upon Fing’s face as he realized the implication of the woman’s words.
“No … no!” he exclaimed, struggling against the woman’s grip on his shoulder.
“Reying, your dagger.” The woman held her hand out as Reying quietly placed a silver dagger in her palm. “Now Fing, if you struggle, I might cut out more than just your eye.”
“No! Please! I promise to get you coins! A hundred neys! Two hundred! Please don’t hurt me! Please!” Fing pleaded, frantic.
“Oh, when you’re one-eyed like Hui,” the woman said, raising the knife to Fing’s cheek, “I’m sure you will fetch – ugh!”
The woman grunted as Hazan punched her in the stomach. He grabbed her hand which held the knife and twisted it, forcing her to drop the dagger on the ground. He then backhanded her across the face, sending her staggering.
Ducking to avoid a swing from Reying, he picked up the dagger from the ground. He jumped back, avoiding another attempted punch from Reying, grabbing the attacking man’s hand. With a swift motion, he stabbed Reying’s forearm and sent blood spraying as he twisted the knife and sliced it along his arm to the wrist and then out through the middle of his ring and middle finger.
Reying’s scream of pain was cut short when Hazan whipped him on the head with the dagger’s wooden handle. The man crumpled to the ground, bleeding and unconscious.
Hazan then turned to glower at the woman, who had backed away to a wall in fear.
“Stay,” he commanded with the bloody knife pointed at her face. He then picked up the two loaves of bread from the ground where Reying had dropped it. The third loaf was lying near the unconscious man, soaked in his blood.
“Don’t be afraid Fing,” Hazan said, approaching the cowering boy hiding behind a box. “I won’t hurt you. Here, take these.”
He held the two loaves out to Fing who stared at it with fear and lust. After a moment, he shook his head.
“They’ll just hurt me again,” he said, his voice weak. “They will take my eye out.” He started crying.
Hazan reached out and placed his hand on Fing’s head who shuddered and winced visibly.
“Take these and go,” he said in the most reassuring voice he could manage. “Don’t worry about these two. They won’t hurt you any longer.”
“B … but the others will,” Fing replied.
“They won’t. I promise. You won’t see these two or the others who want to hurt you ever again.” He slowly massaged the boy’s head, hoping it would soothe him. “Here,” he said, holding out the breads once again.
Fing hesitated before gingerly taking the loaves in his hands.
“Take this too,” Hazan said, handing a fifty neys coin to him. “Go straight home. I’ll deal with them.” He looked over his shoulder at the woman who huddled some paces away, her face pale and frightened.
Fing snatched the coin from Hazan’s hand and ran away, putting the coin in his pocket. Hazan watched the boy run out of the alley and disappear around the corner. Once the boy was gone, he turned his attention to the woman.
“Who are you?” the woman asked, her voice quivering. Her eyes darted to the Reying’s knife on Hazan’s hand. “What are you going to do to me?”
Hazan glanced at the dagger he held in his hand.
“Who am I is of no concern to you. As for what am I going to do to you? How about the same thing you were going to do to Fing?”
For years afterwards, residents of that little slum spoke in hushed tones about the bloodcurdling scream that came from the dark alley. The next day they found a dead man in the alley, his left arm sliced in half from the elbow to his fingers. As for the owner of the scream whom the locals swore must have been a woman, there was no trace at all except a severed eye lying in a pool of blood near the dead man.
Pain.
Fear.
These two were the only two feelings in Xing as she ran as fast as she could. Her breath was ragged and throat hoarse from screaming.
Wetness.
Blood streamed down her cheek from the gaping hole where her eyes once had been. That man … he had cut her eye out. The madman had actually done what he had threatened to do.
Pain.
Fear.
She ran on the bricked pavement along the river that ran through Yanghza. Thrice she tripped; she found it difficult to run having lost half her vision just minutes ago. She shoved people out of the way, grunting and growling like a feral animal, as she made her way to a house by the harbour.
She barged inside the house, shoving aside shocked men and women.
“Xing! What happened to you?!”
“What happened to your eye?!”
“Where’s Reying? Your eye!”
The exclamations were followed by screams from the children that had come in to pay her gang their daily dues.
“Xing!” it was her lover’s voice. “Xing, who did this to you? Xing? Xing!”
His voice faded away. Everything faded away. The screams, the shouts, and even her pain. Only fear remained as, finally, her consciousness faded away.
A sharp pain through her right eye brought Xing out of her dreamless sleep.
Her right eye.
Her hand immediately shot up to her right eye and touched cloth. Where her eye should have been, cloth had been stuffed in. To stop the bleeding most likely. But it did not stop the pain.
“So, you’re finally awake,” a voice said.
Her good eye wandered to the corner of the room where a man sat on a stool, wiping blood off a katana with a purple blade. It took her a moment to realize whom she was looking at. It was him. It was the man who had cut out her eye.
“Quite a ring you had here,” he continued. “Making poor kids beg for you. Collecting their money. Even going as far as to maim them to make them more pitiable.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand how people can stoop so low as to disfigure children for the sake of money.”
Xing was suddenly aware of the dead bodies in the room. They all lay on the floor. To the side, she saw the body of her lover. His vacant eyes stared upwards at the ceiling. His intestines spilled out from his stomach where it had been cut open. There was another cut in his throat from where blood was still oozing out.
“You killed him,” she whispered.
The man turned to look at the dead body she was staring at. “I killed them all,” he said, his voice monotonous. Them it suddenly became chipper. “Except the children of course. They were very happy to be rescued from you filth. They are probably on their way to the city police though so I need to leave soon.”
They were dead. All of them. She could see more bodies in the other room from the ajar door. Blood splatters were all over the furniture and the wall.
“Why did you not kill me?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, but I am. But I wanted to let you live until the last possible moment since you were so helpful in leading me to this den of yours.”
The man stood up, sheathing that strange katana with a cloth. From outside, whistles sounded.
“The police are here. I must be leaving,” he said.
He retrieved a match from his pocket. Xing suddenly realized that she could smell gasoline in the room. The man was going to burn everything down! She tried to get off the bed in order to tackle the man but only succeeded in falling to the floor on her face. Pain shot up the right part of her face and she screamed.
“I chained you to the bed,” the man said calmly. “I let you live until the last possible moment. Now, it is time for you to join your companions.”
He struck the match.
“You’re going to burn me alive?” she asked, her good eye widening in horror.
“You were going to cut out that boy’s eye.”
“No! Please! You already cut my eye out! You killed everyone I cared about! I don’t want to burn alive!” she pleaded. “If you must kill me, cut my throat! Please!”
The man stared at her impassively.
And then he flung the burning match on the floor.
Hazan mingled with the crowd watching the building burn down. The screams had died several minutes earlier. No doubt the woman was dead by now.
She had it coming. They all had it coming. What he’d seen inside, those disfigured children. One with no hand. Another with no legs, sliding himself across the ground on a board with wheels. And then, in the back room, a man in the midst of cutting out a little girl’s nose. He had cut the man’s nose before chopping of his head.
If only he could have inflicted more pain on them. But he had had no time. He himself had told the children to rush to the police. After that, he’d begun killing quickly, efficiently. He had left the woman for the end, to die in suffering for what she had been a part of, for what she was about to do that night, and for what she had probably done to other children before.
He stayed for a while, watching the police and the locals try to put the fire out using water from the river.
Only when the building collapsed, the wood of its foundations burnt down to ash, did he walk away, satisfied with his work. The poor children of this city need no longer walk in fear. He had saved them all.
Okay, this chapter got more intense than I intended.894Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfjwWElTwji
