Chapter – 26
A deserted and filthy back alley.
Jang stopped his steps as he reached the deepest part of the darkest street.
A dusty window, a signboard so worn it was hard to read, and a doorplate with the faint remnants of ‘Rat Poison Store’ entered his view.
Jang gulped.
‘…So I’ve ended up coming here after all.’
There was no other way left.
“Hyung, my, my head, ugh, it feels like it’s splitting apart!!”
His younger brother had been perfectly fine at first. So, Jang had naively thought that something like drug addiction would naturally fade if one just endured it.
But….
Exactly one week later, Luce started clutching his head and thrashing on the bed.
The cause was Angel’s withdrawal symptoms.
Jang had asked around and finally found a woman who was supposedly knowledgeable about Angel.
“A way to quit Angel? There’s no such thing. Who in their right mind would want to quit such a wonderful thing? You should try it yourself while you’re at it.”
But when he finally met her, he couldn’t get any solution.
And while Jang was running around fruitlessly, Luce’s headaches and dizziness grew increasingly severe, to the point where he would vomit even with the slightest movement.
Unable to eat anything but water, his originally thin body was now nothing but skin and bones. Jang grew desperate.
But he couldn’t possibly take his brother to a doctor or a pharmacist.
“Ever seen a corpse that died from Angel? …It was an unusually emaciated body.”
Eventually, after much asking around, he was introduced by an apprentice and met a pharmacist named Jang who was known to be knowledgeable about drugs. But he just grinned creepily, saying, ‘The only way to quit Angel is death.’
However, he unexpectedly gained a lead there.
As Jang got up to leave, telling him not to spout such nonsense, Pharmacist Jang told him about this place, suggesting he try even a ‘Rat Poison Store’.
The Rat Poison Store was an illegal pharmacy known only to a select few.
It had maintained its existence for a long time thanks to its cleverly disguised exterior and a door that only opened with a password.
As instructed by Pharmacist Jang, Jang knocked on the door and scraped his foot three times loudly.
Then, a bloodshot eye appeared through the crack in the door.
The bleary eye stared intently at Jang, as if asking his business.
“…I’ve come to see the Apothecary.”
“……”
The store door opened, and a musty smell hit him.
Jang wrinkled his nose and stepped inside. The one who had opened the door was an elderly man with white hair.
“I am the Apothecary. What can I get for you?”
“…I’m looking for a medicine that can detoxify drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“Yes. It’s a drug called Angel… Is it possible to detoxify it?”
The Apothecary chuckled, then rolled his eyes as he looked Jang up and down.
“Do you think I’m an omnipotent god? How could I detoxify drugs? And of all things, a troublesome one like Angel! It’d be better to just die.”
“……Is there really no way?”
The old man clicked his tongue. He took out a glass jar filled with fireflies, his eyes red.
Then, he opened the lid of a small canister so old it was covered in a thick layer of white dust.
“I can make an ointment from firefly extract mixed with horse dung powder. It will expel the bad energy from the body.”
The Apothecary mixed the firefly juice and horse dung powder without stopping until it thickened.
“Apply this to the head, and the headache will disappear. Apply it to the lips, and the nausea will stop. And….”
The Apothecary gestured to Jang. As Jang approached and bent his waist, the old man whispered secretly into his ear.
“Apply the ointment to the nape of the neck, crouch down, then stretch out while making a crow’s caw. The demon will be expelled. You must caw loudly, ‘Caw, caw’! Kekeke…….”
As soon as Jang returned home, he slathered the ointment thickly on Luce’s forehead, lips, and the nape of his neck.
“Hyung, why does this smell so bad?”
“Bear with it a little. And now, crouch down, stretch out, and make a crow’s caw, Luce.”
“What…?!”
“It’s the treatment. Do it.”
“Caw, caaaw…?”
“Louder.”
“Caw! Caaaw!”
“More!”
“Cawwww!”
“How is it? Do you feel a bit better?”
“No, ugh, it’s the worst. I want to stop…”
But actually trying it, it didn’t seem very effective.
Just as Jang was holding the ointment and frowning seriously, Luce asked in a frightened voice.
“T-tongue? Hyung! Is there a bug on my back?”
“What?”
“Ahh! It just bit me! Get it off, get it off!”
Jang immediately lifted his brother’s clothes and scrutinized his back, but there was no bug anywhere.
“…There’s no bug, Luce.”
“No! It’s crawling on me right now, get it off now! Aaah!!”
Suddenly screaming sharply, Luce started scratching his back frantically. So hard, as if he were terribly itchy, that his skin was peeling.
At that moment.
Jang suddenly remembered the letter from the lady that Jack had delivered.
‘I think there was some nonsense about bugs in there…’
He hurriedly found the letter he had stashed away and read it again, his eyes widening.
“My god, just who is this lady?!”
The withdrawal symptoms described in the letter, their timing and severity, exactly matched what was happening to Luce.
‘To think there’s someone so knowledgeable about Angel?’
But his astonishment was short-lived.
/[Once the headache disappears, the feeling of bugs crawling all over the body begins. The itching will be so severe that you will keep scratching until you bleed.
Tie them down with rope so they cannot scratch.]/
Jang, holding the letter, looked at his brother scratching his back like a madman in a bizarre, contorted position.
His gaunt frame, so like their mother’s.
Luce, who had always been small and slender since childhood, seeming like he might break if handled wrong.
His skin was so tender that he would bruise badly even from just falling. How could he possibly tie him up?
Jang was conflicted.
To tie him up, or to let him scratch until he bled.
“I’m sorry, Luce.”
In the end, deciding to tie his brother up, Jang held back tears and bound Luce tightly.
Every time his brother screamed that he was itchy, that the bugs were biting him, Jang’s heart felt as if it were burning with anguish.
‘I should have accepted that antidote then….’
Jang bit his lip.
Luce, who had resisted fiercely at first, cried himself to exhaustion and fell asleep.
Jang cleaned his brother’s body, now a mess of scratch marks, with salt water, and then went down to the smithy.
Clang, clang, clang-.
The smithy was extremely noisy. His assistants and apprentices were taking turns hammering without rest.
Thanks to that, the sound didn’t leak outside, making it a good place to hide his brother.
“You’re here, Master!”
“Yes. Have you finished today’s quota?”
“Th-that… Ah, we just need to make two more rakes!”
Jang nodded at the assistant, who was now strictly disciplined, and went to his own spot to pick up his hammer.
And he immersed himself in hammering for a while.
For a moment, he was so focused on transforming the quality iron into an axe that he even forgot his worries about his brother.
In the midst of this.
“Master, a guest has arrived outside.”
“For me?”
It was an unannounced visitor.
Wiping his sweat-drenched forehead roughly with the back of his hand, Jang’s expression hardened as soon as he stepped out of the smithy door.
“Hello there, Blacksmith Hyung-nim.”
“What brings you here? The promised deadline is still a long way off.”
The visitor was one of the members of Luce’s group who had commissioned the double-bladed axe.
“Ah-, it’s not about the axe. I was wondering if your brother might be here.”
“…My brother lives separately.”
“He hasn’t come? I see……. I regret to be the one to tell you this, but your brother is missing. We’ve searched the entire North as a duty to our fellow member, but he’s nowhere to be found?”
“…….”
“So I thought he might be here.”
The member grinned, his eyes narrowing into slits.
Jang gulped.
The night he tied up his brother.
As Jang lay beside his brother, killing time awake for a long while.
Knock, knock, knock-.
A knocking sound came from downstairs.
His nerves on edge, Jang gently rose and checked on Luce. Luce had finally managed to fall asleep after not being able to sleep properly lately.
Taking care not to wake his brother, Jang slipped out of the room.
Knock, knock, knock.
The knocking sound came again. Glancing at the hammer placed next to the smithy door, Jang reached out his hand, ready to grab it at any moment, and opened the door.
“…Isn’t it Teacher Jack?”
Confirming the identity of the uninvited guest, Jang quietly lowered his hand.
Jack’s uneven breathing and flushed nose showed how hurriedly he had come.
“What business brings you here in the middle of the night?”
“There’s no time to explain. Where’s Luce?”
“He just fell asleep.”
“I need to see Luce.”
“That won’t do. I said my brother just fell asleep. He’s been restless,”
“Enough, just read this!”
As Jang blocked the door, Jack, who had been fidgeting, suddenly exploded in anger.
What Jack held out was a note.
[If you want your brother to be safe, administer this antidote immediately!]
The message on the note was resolute.
The handwriting, though hastily scrawled, was elegant and neat.
It was a terribly familiar handwriting. The exact same handwriting as the ‘lady’s’ letter, which he had read so many times he had memorized it……
Jack held out a bottle containing the antidote.
At first, Jack, who claimed he could ‘detoxify the drug’, seemed like a fraud.
But now, he wanted to believe that statement.
It was all because of the letter that lady had sent. If she was someone so knowledgeable about Angel, maybe she had truly found a way to detoxify it.
Jang was desperate.
He swore to God that if only his brother would recover, he would do anything to repay this lady for her grace..
