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CROWNLESS

Ch. 1 · The Card

Chapter opening. A high vantage over Hwayang City at first light: the glass towers of the Central District at the centre of the skyline, factory stacks left, ridge-side luxury towers right, cramped low-rise eastern blocks in the near foregr
  1. Caption: Hwayang City — 5:40 AM
  2. Narration: Kang Doyun, nineteen, rides the night shift for Central District General Hospital. His sister's bill is four months old and he is three paydays behind.
  3. Narration: Five districts, forty kilometres of port, and one set of hands that owns all of it. Nobody in Hwayang can put a name to those hands.
Street level, same first light. A packed crossing of office workers, students and riders under umbrellas moves one way between glass shopfronts. At the kerb, Doyun sits on his delivery scooter at the end of a night shift, helmet pushed back
  1. Narration: One more run and the account is short by two hundred thousand won. He has counted it eleven times.
Morning, Ward 6. Doyun comes in off the street still in his rider jacket, helmet under one arm, a folded stack of worn notes in his hand, and walks the corridor toward the lit nurses' station at the far end. Nari's room is the second door o
  1. Narration: Ward 6, Central District General Hospital. Nari has been in the second room on the left for four months.
  2. Narration: Four months of scans and dialysis, and a bill that grows faster than a nineteen-year-old can ride.
At the nurses' station counter. Doyun sets his notes down and counts them out flat with one finger. The ward clerk behind the counter keeps her eyes on her monitor instead of taking the money.
  1. Kang Doyun: Two hundred thousand today. The rest by Friday.
  2. Kang Doyun: That's what the screen said last week. Same as always.
The clerk swings the monitor around on its arm so Doyun can read it. The account line says the balance is settled. Doyun reads it twice and does not move. Down the corridor behind him, Nari's door stands open.
  1. Kang Doyun: Settled how?
Nari's room, second door on the left. Nari sits up in the ward bed, grey cardigan over the gown, watching the doorway. Doyun stands in it with the monitor's words still on his face and does not step in.
  1. Narration: Kang Nari, fifteen. Four months in Ward 6, and she still keeps a list of everything she is going to do when she gets out.
  2. Kang Nari: You've got your delivery face on.
  3. Kang Nari: Whatever it is, say it standing inside the room.
Back at the counter. Doyun asks who paid the bill. The clerk answers without ever looking up from her screen, and the notes go back into his hand, untaken.
  1. Ward Clerk: It was settled yesterday. A sponsor.
  2. Ward Clerk: There's no name on the transfer. We just read the screen.
  3. Kang Doyun: Sponsors have names.
Back in Nari's room. Doyun tells her the bill is clear and does not tell her how. She watches him not telling her, and he grips the bed rail instead of answering.
  1. Kang Nari: You're doing the thing where you don't say it.
  2. Kang Doyun: The bill's clear.
  3. Kang Nari: That's not what I asked.
Doyun leaves for the night's runs. Nari calls after him from the bed; he answers from the doorway with his helmet back on and then walks the corridor out toward the nurses' station.
  1. Kang Nari: Bring me something from outside. Anything with a receipt on it.
  2. Kang Doyun: A receipt. Fine.
  3. Narration: Eight runs were booked for that night, and he took all eight. He had never once missed a night.
Night, the Iron District arterial. Doyun rides east through heavy rain under the elevated rail viaduct, past the factory stacks, on his way to a pickup address he has never been sent to before.
  1. Caption: Iron District — 11:20 PM
  2. Narration: The night shift pays double. Doyun takes the addresses nobody else will.
Under a sodium lamp at the roadside, Doyun slows to read a new order on the phone clamped to his handlebar. The address is Black Harbor, and the fee is four hundred thousand won for one sealed envelope.
  1. Kang Doyun: Four hundred thousand for one envelope.
Black Harbor. The quay runs left to right along black water; stacked dark containers form two rows down the middle, the rusted gantry crane straddles them, and the huge windowless warehouse stands at the right end with its steel roll door u
  1. Caption: Black Harbor — 1:05 AM
  2. Narration: The docks were abandoned twenty years ago. Tonight somebody is paying four hundred thousand won to have one envelope carried out here.
Doyun rides the container rows toward the warehouse, past the crane legs. Up close, the sedan's paint is matte black and there is a small silver emblem on the rear pillar.
  1. Narration: Four hundred thousand won, and one rule he had never broken: take the money, carry the thing, ask nothing.
Doyun stops the scooter short of the door and gets off. The six men do not move and do not speak. Nobody has told him where to put the envelope.
  1. Kang Doyun: Delivery for gate three.
  2. Narration: Eleven hundred deliveries in this city, and nobody had ever met him with six silent men.
First appearance of the man in the white shirt. He comes out of the warehouse doorway into the door lamp's light and stops, hands behind his back, and speaks to Doyun without raising his voice.
  1. Baek Mujin: You're early. That's rare.
Doyun holds the sealed envelope out at arm's length. Mujin takes it with both hands and does not open it. Doyun waits to be paid.
  1. Kang Doyun: Sealed. I didn't open it.
  2. Baek Mujin: I know. I watched you the whole way here.
  3. Kang Doyun: Then we're done. Four hundred thousand.
Instead of cash, Mujin sets a matte black card into Doyun's open palm: no printing on it, only an embossed silver crown with its top cut away catching the door lamp.
  1. Baek Mujin: Keep it. It's yours now.
Doyun says the card is not money. Mujin tells him it is worth more than money and costs more too, and turns back toward the warehouse with the sealed envelope in one hand.
  1. Kang Doyun: This isn't money.
  2. Baek Mujin: No. It's worth more than money. And it costs more than money.
  3. Kang Doyun: Costs who?
One of the men steps out of the line and holds out a plain black envelope for the fee. Doyun takes it, gets back on the scooter and rides out through the chain-link gate without looking back at the warehouse.
  1. Narration: They paid him in paper and put a card in his hand that he had not asked for.
  2. Narration: He waited until the gate lights were behind him before he even thought about the fee.
Doyun pulls up at an empty north-line bus shelter and kills the engine. The shelter is lit by one sodium lamp, the bench under the roof is dry, and the street behind is shuttered and shut for the night.
  1. Caption: North Line — 2:40 AM
  2. Narration: One stop from home. He sat down to count the fee and be done with the night.
Doyun sits forward on the bench, tears the plain black envelope open with his thumb and tips it over his open palm. A card slides out face down onto his hand.
  1. Narration: He had counted on cash. He had already spent it twice in his head.
Doyun turns the card over. There is writing on it, in fine silver ink: his sister's name, and a date three days out. He goes completely still on the bench.
  1. Narration: Three days from tonight.
Doyun holds the two cards side by side: the blank one from the warehouse in his left hand, the written one in his right. He presses his thumb over the date as if checking that it is really printed there.
  1. Narration: The blank card said nothing. The other one already knew her name.
The chapter's last beat. Doyun stands under the sodium lamp with the written card held up in his right hand between his eyes and the light, the blank card in his left, drizzle running down his face. The name and the date on the card are leg
  1. Narration: Three days. He had three days to find out who writes on these.

End of Chapter 1

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Chapter 2 · written, not drawn yet

Five Seats

A card that will not burn, a sister moved to a private ward, and an old coach in the Iron District who knows the silver crown.

about 24 pages · drawn in about 10 minutes · free for everyone after

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