The photograph showed Hyu (휴, Hyu) standing in a neat suit in a garden. He held a dog leash tautly and stared straight into the lens. But the thing attached to the leash was not a dog but a boy. That boy, also dressed neatly in a suit with a collar like a pet, was one I knew well even though I'd never met him in person: a thin, pale boy with light blonde hair and blue eyes.A cold realization crawled over me. These were the boys—my predecessors, their ruined images laid out like a roll call of blame. My gaze snagged on the last photo and would not leave it.George (조지, Joji) cleared his throat, the sound soft but carrying weight. He reached down and picked up a small, familiar object from where he'd placed the photos at my feet: a short length of coarse rope. He stood and folded it neatly, then drew close and draped it across my shoulders like a mock courtesy."You're a thoughtful man, Raymond (레이몬드, Raymond)," he said in a voice without warmth. "You run from one who hurt you only to fall into another's hands. How quaint."He planted himself in front of me and, with exaggerated gentleness, unhooked my bindings. I tensed, but my arms did not obey my will. Freedom of motion came in stages; I felt the ropes slip and then remain, just enough slack to allow a small spool of movement. My wrists cracked against the ropes as I flexed, testing the room."Stand," George said.I obeyed. My legs trembled. The room spun faintly. Matt (맷, Maet) was there, pale and broken, eyes hollow. My chest tightened with something like guilt and something like recognition. He sat back on his heels and stared at the photographs scattered between us.George walked around me, looking at the images as if reading a script. He stopped at one photo and ran a thumb across its surface, smearing a little dust. He looked up at me, eyes like chips of blue glass."You wanted to forget," he said. "You tried to run away from their hands. That makes you messy, Raymond. Messes are easier to tidy when you don't get sentimental."A small, brittle smile crept across his lips. I felt nausea, then anger, then emptiness. Matt, who had just been beating me raw, had crouched in the corner like an animal. He was both culprit and victim, and his ruined hand—no fingers—was a mute accusation I could not answer.George motioned to Jerome (제롬, Jerome), who stepped forward, wiping his palms as if the act of cleaning could make absolution possible."Take him," George said. "Make an example."Jerome's eyes flicked to me with their strange, tender cruelty. He bent and fastened something to my wrists. The world narrowed to the metallic click and the scrape of leather. I could think of nothing but the sting of the blows, the taste of iron and the heat of indignation.They made me stand in the center of that windowless room. The lights burned hot around me. The tripod stood like an executioner’s stand. Matt shuffled forward, holding a length of something—tape, maybe, or the hilt of some improvised cudgel. He hesitated, looking at George for a nod, and George only smiled and nodded sardonically.I did not beg. What words could take back the chain of events that had already unspooled? Instead I watched them watch me, and I cataloged their faces like a ledger: Jerome’s green eyes gleaming with something like pity, Sergio’s (세르지오, Sereujio) frightened, mute lips trembling behind the gag, Matt’s empty-handed cruelty, George’s smooth, watchful mask.They began without ceremony. Matt swung the tripod across my shoulders. Pain lanced and I doubled over. They offered no mercy. I tasted blood and grit. The blows came again and again—precision and fury interleaved. Jerome's hands steadied my head in some moments, then shoved me forward in others. George snapped orders as if conducting a sad recital."You asked to be cleansed," George said, and his voice was almost conversational. "You ran, Raymond. You tried to flee. So we burn what is dirty so the rest can go on."Fire was mentioned as matter-of-factly as the weather. Somewhere in the back a match was struck, a lighter thumbed, and later a roar would swallow small, desperate sounds. I thought of James (제임스, Jeimseu) and the way his face had crumpled in the motel parking lot. I thought of Jerome’s hands that had once been gentle. I tried to find a place for any of it inside me, but the noise and the pain and the faces blurred.My body became a map of insults. Every blow left a marker. Their voices kept the rhythm: "Confess. Look at what your kind does. Learn." The words were rehearsed and old.At some point the world compressed to a single point of white pain. My vision tunneled and lights shimmered like the edges of a fever dream. I heard a faraway voice—the radio from the car, Britney Spears singing as if nothing of this gravity could touch the ordinary world—and then it dissolved.When consciousness returned, I was strapped to a gurney. The room smelled of antiseptic and smoke. My arms were splayed and my legs felt leaden. Someone had cut my clothing away. I could not move my jaw easily. My tongue felt swollen; my teeth frayed around blood.A figure in a dark uniform loomed over me. George's voice, low and metallic, came through as if from the bottom of some deep well."You will be presented as what you chose to be," he said. "A perpetrator. A danger. Convenient. The cameras will make it so."I tried to speak and a cracked whisper escaped."Why—""Because," George said gently, as if explaining arithmetic to a child, "no one remembers the victims when it's convenient to remember the monster."They wheeled me through corridors, past faces I did not recognise and faces who knew me too well. Flashbulbs fired. Agents took notes. Somewhere someone called my name and then stopped.They took me to a place that smelled of rain and machinery, and I realized that the world had narrowed to two things: the record they would paint of me, and the memories burned into my flesh. I had set out to escape and in the attempt had only woven myself tighter into their design.At the end, when a clerk read me my rights in a voice so calm it could have been a lullaby, I thought of James and the way he had tried to save me. I thought of the boy I had killed—of the knife that should have changed all of our fates—and of the long, terrible chain of choices. I thought of Julia (줄리아, Julia) and whether any of it mattered to her now.They took photographs. I saw myself in still images, a grotesque specimen for a story. Hands pulled and prodded and arranged, and a composite of a narrative was pieced together—my flight, my "arson," my "assault." George spoke into a recorder with a practiced cadence.Outside, sirens wailed and people shouted. Inside, a quieter violence stitched me into a rôle that was not mine by nature. The world kept forming its stories, and the truth was folded like paper to fit the lines.They loaded me into a vehicle. The gurney rolled and I watched the ceiling of the transport pass like a slow film. As we moved, somewhere far off a siren—human, layered, insistent—sang against the night. My hands were still bound. My throat was thick with something that was passing for tears. I thought of all the faces in those photographs. I thought of the boy in the suit on the leash and the glint in George's eyes and Jerome's hands that had once wiped sweat from my brow.The car jolted. The night outside was a smear of red and white ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) light. I had been taken from one cage into another. The story they would tell of me was being written in other people's mouths. I was to become a cautionary object, a headline, a convenient scrap of meaning in a messy world.As the transport carried me back into the dark, I had the absurd, sharp urge to memorize Jerome's face, Sergio’s, Matt's, James's—not because it would change anything, but because if nothing else remained I would at least have those traces to hold as proof that the chain of cruelties had not been a dream.They drove on. The city lights blurred and the radio somewhere in another world sang on.

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