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"The road to vengeance is paved with blood.” – Gendo Ikari
Instinct
People like to talk about instinct like it is a phenomenon... a miracle.
Like it’s a sharp voice in your head telling you exactly what to do. Turn left. Don’t go there. Run now. Stories always make it sound dramatic, like some invisible hand reaching out at the last moment to pull you away from disaster.
But instinct isn’t like that.
Most of the time it’s quiet. It doesn’t shout or make sense. It just sits there under your skin, making everything feel slightly wrong without giving you a reason why.
That day it felt like an itch I couldn’t reach.
I kept checking my phone even though I knew there wouldn’t be anything there. I walked faster than usual between errands, snapping at people who got in my way. Every time my father gave me another task I felt this strange urgency clawing at my ribs, like I was wasting time I couldn’t afford to waste.
If someone had asked me why, I wouldn’t have had an answer.
I would’ve just shrugged and said I was bored.
That’s the problem with instinct. It never gives you evidence. Just a feeling. A vague sense that something is off.
And feelings are easy to ignore.
Especially because I’d always been a little restless when Gotak wasn’t around. He liked to tease me about it... said I followed him around like a stray dog that refused to leave his porch. Maybe he wasn’t wrong. After spending years side by side, it felt strange when a day passed without seeing him.
So I ignored the feeling.
I finished the errands. I wasted the hours. I kept telling myself I’d see him later, that he’d probably complain about something stupid the moment we met.
Looking back now, I keep thinking about how many chances I had to listen to that instinct.
I could have called him.
I could have gone looking for him.
I could have dropped everything and said screw the errands, screw my father, screw whatever pointless thing I was supposed to be doing.
But I didn’t.
Because instinct feels stupid when nothing has happened yet.
Because it’s easy to convince yourself you’re overreacting.
People say you can’t change the past by thinking about it too much.
They’re probably right.
But sometimes I still catch myself wondering what would have happened if I had listened.
If I had trusted that quiet, irritating feeling crawling under my skin.
Maybe I would’ve arrived earlier.
Maybe I would’ve gotten there before Baekjin and Seongje finished what they started.
Maybe...
Maybe I wouldn’t have found him lying there in the dark.
Maybe Gotak...
Maybe I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life knowing that the most important warning the world gave me through instinct… was the one I chose to ignore.
The Start of The End
All it took for my world to end was one message.
“I’m not sure if I should text you but… Gotak is fighting the Union behind the old warehouse. There’s a lot of them. It looks bad.”
I didn’t remember running, only that the city blurred into streaks of neon and shadow. My lungs burned, but I ignored it. I kept telling myself this wasn’t new. Gotak had been in a lot of fights before. He had walked away... always.
He was stubborn like that.
Indestructible like that.
He had to be.
When I reached the alley, the first thing I noticed was the silence. A few figures staggered away at the far end, some clutching their ribs, some limping, all avoiding my eyes. I knew who they were.
Who they answered to.
Baekjin.
Even thinking his name felt like biting down on broken glass.
I stepped deeper into the alley, and that was when I saw him.
Gotak was lying on his side as though he had simply grown tired and decided to rest against the cold pavement. One arm was stretched out awkwardly, fingers curled as if he had been reaching for something. The harsh fluorescent light from a nearby sign washed his skin in a pale glow that made him look almost unreal, like a still image someone had pasted into the wrong frame.
For one fleeting second, I felt relief.
He was just… just unconscious.
I knelt beside him and nudged his shoulder, already preparing a sarcastic comment about how dramatic he looked sprawled like that.
“Gogo, wake up. What the fuck happened?” I said breathless.
His body shifted too easily under my touch.
There is a difference between someone resting and someone who is… gone. It is not something you can describe with the right words, but you feel it instantly. The weight changes. The warmth changes. Everything about them is different.
His head tipped back, and his eyes were open.
They were not focused on me.
They were not focused on anything.
For a moment I simply stared, waiting for the smallest flicker of annoyance, waiting for him to roll his eyes and tell me to stop looking at him like that. I pressed my palm to his cheek.
It was cooling beneath my skin.
No.
No.
I pulled him upright into my arms, cradling him against my chest as though proximity alone could force his heart to remember its rhythm. My hand slid to the back of his head, fingers tangling in his hair, and I found myself whispering nonsense. Old insults. Old nicknames. Things from when we were kids and he used to pout whenever I beat him in a race to the park.
“You’re fine,” I murmured, even as the words scraped my throat raw. “You’ve had worse. Get up. Please, Gogo. Please, get up. I’m here.”
The memory hit me then… so vivid it made my vision blur.
Baekjin, years ago, crouched behind a convenience store while older boys shoved him around for sport. Gotak had been the first to step forward. I had followed without thinking. We fought side by side, back to back, and when it was over Baekjin looked at us as though we had rewritten the rules of his world.
Gratitude had shone in his eyes like devotion.
I had thought we saved him that day.
I had not realized we were feeding something uglier... something that would grow crooked and resentful, something that would look at Gotak’s capacity to love and mistake it for theft.
Jealousy is a quiet rot.
It festers in the dark and convinces itself it deserves what it cannot earn.
The Unraveling
The sirens came eventually, distant at first, then swelling until red and blue lights painted the brick walls in violent flashes. I barely noticed when people gathered at the mouth of the alley. I barely registered the paramedics kneeling beside us, their voices professional and strained.
“Sir, we need space.”
I did not move.
Hands hovered near my shoulders. Someone tried to pry my fingers from the fabric of Gotak’s jacket, but I tightened my grip without conscious thought. They could drag me across concrete before I let him slip from my arms.
“He’s gone,” one of them said gently, as though the softness would make it less painful.
Gone.
The word sounded temporary. Like he had stepped out and might return if I waited long enough.
I pressed my forehead against his and inhaled deeply, memorizing the scent of sweat and metal and the faint trace of detergent from his shirt.
He was supposed to nag me forever.
He was supposed to drag me back whenever I went too far.
Without him, there were no brakes and no boundaries.
The police asked questions. Names. Descriptions. They spoke of the Union, of Baekjin and Seongje, of escalating violence and consequences. Their words drifted around me like distant static.
Consequences meant nothing now.
Rules meant nothing.
Eventually, I felt it.
The breaking.
It was not dramatic. It felt like an internal collapse, like a beam inside a building finally giving way after years of strain. Every time Gotak had grabbed my collar and told me to stand down, every time he had convinced me that revenge was not worth the cost, that part of me had listened because it was him asking.
Whatever part of me held back before… whatever part stayed soft because Gotak was there to anchor me...
it died in that cold night with him.
When I finally allowed them to lift him onto the stretcher, it was not because they convinced me. It was because I understood something with terrifying clarity.
Holding him would not bring him back.
But letting go of his body would let me move… move and do what I should have done fucking years ago.
As the ambulance doors closed, I remained standing in the alley, blood drying on my hands, sirens fading into the distance. The night resumed its usual rhythm, indifferent to what it had just witnessed. People would sleep. The city would wake tomorrow.
Baekjin, Seongje, and everyone else would pretend this had been an accident.
Baekjin would tell himself this was necessary.
I looked down at my hands and noticed they were steady.
The grief was there, yes.
But beneath it was something colder.
Something far more enduring.
A resolve that settled into my bones like winter... sharp and unyielding.
Baekjin once looked at me like I was a hero.
It almost makes me laugh now.
Because Baekjin never understood what he was actually looking at.
Gotak used to be the only reason I believed in restraint. Whenever I went too far, whenever that part of me that enjoys violence started pushing forward, he was the one who pulled me back. Sometimes he did it with a joke, sometimes with a shove to the shoulder, sometimes just with that look he had whenever he thought I was being an idiot.
He balanced me in ways I never fully noticed while he was still there.
Where I was reckless, he was steady.
Where I was cruel, he was patient.
Where I saw problems that could be solved with broken bones, he saw reasons to stop before things crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.
Gotak liked to say that choosing peace when you were capable of violence was what made someone human.
He believed that.
Really believed it.
The ironic thing is that Gotak never realized something important.
He was the only reason I ever tried.
I wasn’t holding back because of some moral lesson.
I was holding back because it mattered to him.
And now he’s gone.
The End of Everything
When shit hits the fan, people like to talk about justice.
I know the police will investigate. I know they’ll talk about witnesses, evidence, procedure. They’ll pretend there’s a system meant to handle things like this.
But justice feels like a distant, polite word that belongs to people who still had something left in them.
What I want isn’t justice.
Justice is morally right and honorable.
Fuck morals. Fuck honor.
What I want is far uglier than that.
I want vengeance.
I want the people who stood in that alley tonight to understand what it means to take something that cannot be replaced. I want them to feel the same suffocating emptiness sitting in my chest right now.
I want their warm blood to run cold in my hands the same way Gotak’s did in mine.
Baekjin thought he understood violence. He built an empire around it, gathered followers like Seongje who believed strength meant standing at the top of a pile of broken bodies.
But even Baekjin and Seongje have things they wants to protect. Things like money. Power. Status. Ego.
I have none of that left.
Without Gotak, there’s nothing in this world I still want.
And that makes me far more dangerous than they have ever been.
Whatever it takes...
However long it takes...
Vengeance will be mine.