It was early autumn in San Francisco and a thick fog had rolled in. It was taller than the highest skyscrapers and brought the city in close. Lights would bleed their neon into the murky fog of evening and only reveal their details when you were practically underneath them.

San Francisco's Chinatown was situated on the north-eastern tip of the city's peninsular, though this didn't help Baek much, since the area was massive. The signs and streets were all in dual English and Hanzi characters, but this also didn't help Baek, who had little cause to read or write even much Hangul in his time. He'd been diligent enough at school, but rote learning really hadn't sustained him, especially when he felt years older than fellow classmates who had time to play at a childhood. Baek would go home each day to work odd jobs at the station or around town to pick up the slack. He'd come back late in the evening and cook, or stock cupboards, or clean, determined that his siblings wouldn't live in squalor. If he missed out on a few school classes, it was only to drag his brother out of street gang mischief or to get in an hour of taekwondo when he didn't feel exhausted.

Baek buttoned his sleeveless vest over his chest. It had still been fairly mild in Busan when he left. Here, everything was damp and miserable. And he was hungry. He'd never been on a trip away before. He'd taken the train to a few different cities back home, but rarely for more than a day away. Probably he didn't have enough clothes with him… Choi had given him fifty US dollars, but Baek had no idea how far that would go. He kept the cash well stashed, wary of flashing around what might be big money.

A good smell hit his nose and, given that he could barely see a few yards down the street, he decided that was a better indicator than his eyes could offer. The restaurant he found was bright and cheerful; bustling, but not so much so that Baek couldn't find himself a table in the corner. He watched the room warily, trying to learn from the locals what the correct customs were. It seemed almost everyone spoke English, though a few of older staff chatted together in a dialect of Chinese he couldn't recognise.

"Okay! Can I take your order please, sir!" An enthusiastic young man with bowl-cut hair came to Baek's table and beamed at him. Baek glowered back. Then he looked down at the menu he'd been stumbling through.

"Uh-…" Baek scoured the menu again.

"Oh-… you want Chinese? I don't speak Chinese, man."

Baek kept looking at the menu. "Neither do I."

The waiter laughed and looked over the menu with him. "What do you like? Chicken?"

"…Beef."

"Ok, beef, no problem. Just kick back, I'll fix you something."

The waiter headed off, then paused, spun on a foot and headed back round. Baek looked at him with dull, uninviting eyes, but this apparently did nothing to dissuade the man.

"Say," the waiter said, "You want, like, my own special dish? I'm a cook-in-training, when I'm not waiting… or kung fu training!" He struck a few poses that were very showy and Bruce Lee, whilst Baek continued to give him a look of utmost disinterest. "Haha, but seriously." The waiter leaned on the table and took an undertone. "It's pretty cheap too, not bad value, whaddya say?"

Baek breathed in, then out, trying to control his always simmering temper. He gave a terse, empty smile, the subtleties of which seemed to be lost on his waiter.

"Are you sure you work here?"

"Huh?! What? Sure I do! Tch. You don't want the special, you don't gotta have it!"

"I'll take whatever," Baek shrugged. "If it's cheap like you say, then fine."

The waiter gave him a wicked grin, then vanished into the bustle of the restaurant.

Baek managed to find a few minutes of peace after that.

Peace was relative though. He had time to himself. Time to sit and look out the window onto a grey, drizzling street whilst the room around him vibrated with colour and activity. Time look at the faint outline of his own reflection. Time to think of those cassette tapes lining that draw. Time to think of the little provocation it took for Choi to draw his tape out. Time to think of the child on that audio. Of the murderer on that audio. Who, after all he'd done for his siblings, had still been the one to deprive them of a father. Maybe if his father had been alive, Ki San wouldn't be cosying up to organised crime. Maybe he himself would be a rising taekwondo star on the international circuit under his tutelage. Maybe they could have rebuilt. Maybe there could have been a merciful reprieve granted for extenuating circumstances that let his father at least out on bail to be with them. Maybe things could have gotten better. Why hadn't he checked? Why hadn't he asked? How could he not recognise his own father? How could he not notice his voice? How had he forgotten so much so quickly? He'd had something special. Someone special. Someone to whom he could give his unconditional trust. Someone who made an impossible escape from prison against all odds just to get back to him. Someone who risked everything for his family. The knowledge of just how rare a thing that was was hitting him now with depths he hadn't truly appreciated before.

Choi had betrayed him. From the beginning, he had had insurance. That changed everything. It changed every fraction of their relationship. From the moment Baek had trusted him, that trust had been built on a lie. It had been concealed as he was built into someone who could be blackmailed. What did this even mean? All those inane tasks he'd done for Choi… Why worry about organised crime? Wasn't working for a police officer like that the same thing? Wasn't it all the same thing? Why was his father, a desperate man trying to help his family, dead? Why was he, Doo San, a murderer, unpunished? Why was Choi, who'd been recording tapes for private use for decades, rewarded, promoted, even? Why was nothing fair? And here he was again. Doing this all over again. The kind of violence he swore not to buy into again. He'd been there. He'd fought off everyone that came to their door tooth and nail. Where had that gotten him?

Baek's hands were ridged and trembling as he turned them over, making shapes like iron spiders. He stared forward, seeing but not seeing the family birthday party happening a table away.

"Oo-kay! One beef rice coming up! Chef's speciality! And by 'chef'-" The waiter set the bowl down and leant an elbow on the table "I mean, yours truly." He winked, then whispered, "Don't tell a soul though, okay?"

Baek paid up, having no idea if the dish was cheap like had been claimed, and picked up a pair of chopsticks. The waiter hung around at his elbow, clearly hoping for a verdict. The rice was extremely spicy, with almost every other flavour drowned out by the overpowering intensity. Baek didn't mind spice, and had had enough moments in his life with an absence of food to care very little about how palatable a dish was.

"Good, right?!" The waiter beamed at him.

Baek just kept eating. Eventually the man huffed in frustration and wandered off. It was worse once he was gone though. At least the man's bubbling enthusiasm had stopped Baek's mind from wandering. Left alone, he immediately sunk into his own thoughts again.

After eating, Baek ended up searching Chinatown for another forty minutes before he chanced upon a boy. The kid was scrawny, but had some sinew on him, so Baek didn't entirely doubt him when he claimed to be the son of a local martial arts teacher. Baek pressed him on the school name, and, on finding a match, had the boy lead him to the school. Baek felt an absence of emotion as he watched the boy skip away. He was too trusting. Baek had already learned a thousand hard lessons by the time he was the boy's age.

'Marshall Dojo' was a small, respectable affair, set back a little from the street. A large, clean, glass window opened up its interior, revealing gleaming, new wood, mats lining the floor, and a long line of mirrors at the far end of the room. It looked a well-loved, cared for place. It had a peaceful simplicity to it. Baek hated the jealousy he felt in his chest on looking at it. He'd trained in parking lots, and back alleys filled with syringes and broken glass.

Baek turned away to lean against the street wall. He let his head rest on the brickwork and looked up. The dark eaves of overhanging buildings blocked up his view, and the rest was lost to eddies of lingering fog. There were small signs of community up there though: a washing line hung between two different apartments; toys posed in misted up windows; and always the smell of food being cooked.

He'd striven so hard for pieces of this. That drive had kept him going all through his childhood. Even if he was something broken and unsalvageable, it wasn't too late for his brothers and sister. If he could somehow give them what other people had, maybe they'd be alright. They were all grown up now though, damaged in their own personal, private ways. And now that they no longer needed him, he'd lost something. He'd lost the purposefulness that kept him from thinking too hard about the more loathsome qualities of his own existence.

Perhaps he should walk away; stay here in America, where no one knew him; start a dojang like this one. Did they extradite murderers? Would that be him? – a convict who'd only be able to help his family by escaping from some twenty-year sentence? Would he, too, be unrecognisable? Would some other sibling kill him, and live like this, with the weight of their grief so thick, so heavy, so suffocating that it cloyed up the hours of the day?

Or did he do as he was told. Another task on a checklist of many he'd already done.

Files of students were making their way into the martial arts school.

"Sifu said his shift is late, so we should start without him," a student was saying as they passed.

"Who's doing the warm-up? It better not be Johnny… I hate his warm-ups, he makes you run for hours."

"It's, like, ten mins tops, man. You're so unfit."

"Ten minutes is a long time!"

Baek scoffed internally. He felt it again. That weird pang. Somewhere between kinship and jealousy. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to be among those students; to be one of them. He wondered if they knew each other's weaknesses or pointed out flaws in each other's moves, or holes in their guard. He wondered if they sparred in relative safety, honing those moves in more than just solo practice or the adrenaline-spiking confrontation of a street fight.

Well, let's see if all that safe sparring has paid off.

It could be like Choi said: confrontations weren't all that uncommon in dojangs. These students would have a fighting chance. If they lost, that was their own fault for not training hard enough. He didn't intend to smash up that neat-looking set-up they had in there, but if the walls got in the way of his kicks, that was hardly his problem. His expression set hard.

He strode into the school.

A jumble of white-uniformed students had been milling around chatting. A few were throwing light jabs and bouncing on their feet, laughing and swapping jokes. Silence fell the instant Baek walked into the room.

"Where is your teacher?" he asked, knowing the answer. There was quiet. "I asked a question?!" he rapped out, and the room jumped.

"Sifu is out, sir. He'll be a while still."

Baek paced before the front of the class. "I see. Then who will defend the honour of this school?"

The students looked at one another warily.

"No one?!" Baek could feel his infamous temper rising. "How about all of you?! None of you look like you've seen a real fight in your life! Come at me! Let's see if this 'Marshall Law' has put anything at all into your thick skulls!"

That earned him some bristling at least. A few students were looking coldly at him now, he could see the fire in their eyes. Good.

"Well?" he barked. "Fine, if no one dares answer my challenge, then I'll walk out that door and let all the world know that only cowards can be found in Marshall Dojo!"

The flying kick that came at him was all rage and no finesse. Baek had been primed for a response the moment he walked into the school. His limbs were quivering with pent-up energy. He turned easily to the side and the jump kick crashed straight into the wall behind him. An incense burner in the school shrine wobbled, then toppled to the floor. Its porcelain cracked open and broke in two pieces on the floor.

Baek lifted his eyes from it, and this time all the students met his gaze, hard and determined. A smirk crossed his lips. Baek stepped forward slowly into the middle of the mats. The students backed away until they formed a circle around him.

Two students charged him. Before they got within punching distance, Baek thrust out a kick straight to one's chest. It connected with a thud and the student's feet cleared the ground as they dropped. The second student hesitated, a wound punch stayed at the sight. Another attacker sprung from behind Baek before he'd replaced his foot. Baek spun and his momentum arced a kick behind to careen into the attacker's head. They went down in an instant. Baek had time to bounce the foot down and catch the next student with a kick to the head. The force slammed them to the mats. Baek snapped his foot back, planted his weight on it, then leapt with his other foot to ram a foot into the chest of an attacker from his right. Then he was back to his other foot, curling a hooked kick to another head, then spinning a half circle to catch another from behind in the gut. Then he was in a rhythm – arcing a head kick, landing, spinning to the next leg, land, then the next – appearing to whirl across the mats. He used the reach of his legs as a windmill, powering through any who entered the space, governing the precious meters he had with intimidation as much as with strength.

He stamped his foot down and paused. Students lay strewn across the floor, groaning and nursing heads. The rest were an agitated, fidgety circle, flinching back when he glanced their way. The blood was pumping through Baek's veins now. He stalked back to the centre of the room. He lowered his guard deceptively. An attacker came from behind. This time Baek let him close, then span and punched him hard in the solar plexus. The student froze where he stood, then clutched his chest and sunk to his knees.

"Is this all? I wonder what competition was running scared of all this!" He hated how easy that goading came to him. He hated the prowl in his own step, and the manic edge to the smirk he flashed to the room. He hated how easy all this felt, how natural. He hated that the explosion of pent-up aggression he unleashed felt so good, so freeing.

One of the students broke away from the others – he was taller, had a little bulk on him – still probably no older than his early twenties, but with a bit more of a seasoned rangy-ness in his step.

"Real low of you to pick when our sifu isn't here," the man snarled. "I'd spit at you but you ain't worth as much as the ancestors I'd be dishonourin'." The guy nodded towards the school shrine.

His words pressed all Baek's buttons and he saw red in an instant. He flew at the guy – leaping, switching legs mid-air and crashing a foot towards his head. The man wasn't just all talk though. He put a strong guard up that took the brunt of the force, then snapped a kick back into Baek's chest. He swung his arm as he dropped into a horse stance, catching Baek with an open hand strike before he returned his hand to his chest. Then he thrust out an elbow that thumped angular into Baek's sternum, knocking the air out, and finished by unfolding a backfist into Baek's face with a ringing shout. An explosion of pain smarted across Baek's vision. He could still see the fist that had struck him, quivering in the air, there was so much intensity behind the strike.

Baek staggered back, lip beading with swollen blood and budding purple. He clutched his chest and breathed hard. The moment the students saw weakness, the spell was broken, and they were on him like jackals. They swarmed towards him, barely keeping out of one another's paths as they launched strikes at him. Baek sought out the wall to keep behind him. He ducked a punch that came in close and answered with a snap kick to a torso. He was pressed back by three more bearing down on him though. A sweep took out the legs of one long enough to stall the second, but a third student punched him in the jaw, clipping knock-out points that sent the room woozy.

Baek blinked away darkness. He pulled his foot back to clear space with a kick, but his heel clicked against the wall, grazing the back of his ankle. He fended off a triple punch and low blocked a sweep, drew back his body to wind up a punch, but caught his elbow on wood, ringing on the funny bone and shooting jolts of pain up his arm. He was forced to bring his guard in close and his lift his leg before him just to cover against a barrage of attacks bearing down on him. He bowed into the temporary cocoon, breathing hard. Sweat trickled down his spine. His hair was lank against the back of his neck and he could taste blood between his teeth. The bruising punishment against his covering arm and leg had his muscles quivering in protest. The wall might limit the angles his opponents could get on him, but he couldn't get enough power and momentum in with it behind him. He was limited to just kicking forward. He couldn't spin his body into the faster kicks he needed to knock down his opponents quicker than they came. Elbows he pulled back kept hitting the wall, and his footwork was trapped between it and the crowd before him. He needed to control the room again. He needed space.

He gave a sudden roar, stunning those closest to him into surprise. He tore off his jacket and threw it to the floor.

"You think I can't tear this place apart!"

He realised he'd screamed this in his native tongue, but it didn't matter: it psyched his opponents out enough to cede him ground as they backed away. He strode with absolute confidence back into the centre of the room, bare-chested, pumped on the moment, and with wildness in his eyes.

Baek kicked his leg up vertically, pointing his sole to the ceiling. Then he lowered it slowly until his leg was horizontal, aimed at his opponents: a clear, arrogant taunt. This is what he was good at. This is what Choi had kept him around for. A weapon.

Pain from moments before reduced to a pinprick in his thoughts and he was all keen, all focus, all streamlined rage. He let out a blood-curling screech and he threw himself bodily behind a kick that took him off the ground and connected his shin to the back of a head. A mist descended on him – parting the unliveable wreck of the everyday from the present.

In the midst of violence, there was only the moment. He had control here in a way he could never have elsewhere. There was a simplicity in striking and defence, footwork and feinting. Where momentum was, weight had to follow. Bodies didn't lie. Not like tongues. The world was simpler like this. There was no space for meaning and guilt. Here things existed in a purity of upright or fallen; a technique executed or failed. Time and practice could result in mastery. You could put something in and get something out. Not like elsewhere. Not like elsewhere where the game was always rigged. Where you could hold the weight of the world on your shoulders, only to find it had been deliberately placed there. The game was rigged, and the rest he'd done himself. He'd done himself. He'd done himself. This was the only thing he was good at. This was the only part of himself he liked. This was the part of himself he hated. He'd gone too far. He'd gone too far. He'd gone too far a long time ago. How did no one know that he looked at them all from the other side of a veil? Did anyone think about what it meant? Life? Did they think about how easily it could vanish from a body? Did they think about how the word person, saram, was so close to sarang for love? Did they think about how ending one removed the other? Like removing all colour from the world. Like removing the possibility that he could have that – personhood; love – two sides of the same coin.

He'd vowed never to do this again. He'd staked what integrity he had on this. He'd built rules to make life at least liveable. It was himself breaking in this dojang, so very far from home. It was only himself.

He ran across the room and flying kicked a student through the windows of the school onto the street beyond. Glass flowed like water burst from a dam, flushing onto the school floor in brilliant crystal waves. The sheen of shattering glass smashing around him barely registered. Baek was a hawk amongst prey, leaping in attacks that took his entire bodyweight behind them to crash his own mass into another human being. He ran up another body and powered off them to fling a headkick into the next. He saw that top student who had riled him, absent now of features to him – just another body. Baek ran at him then jumped a double kick into his chest. The man flew into the ancestral shrine, shattering its woodwork. Paper and portraits and wooden sticks inscribed with names all broke upon the ground.

Baek stood still, breath pouring out of him in heaves like an animal. He whirled on the spot. The few students who were left standing fled. They fled in a stumbling, hunted way, with a whimper in their breaths and urgency in their furtive, broken movements.

Then there was stillness in the school.

Concussed students lay fallen about the room. The walls were crumpled and dented in places. The shattered window had littered glass across half the room, and the rest was covered in the shrine's splinters.

Baek felt that mist lifting, sliding from purpose to indifference. He shifted his weight and something crunched under his foot: a broken picture frame. The photograph within held a man, standing happily outside the new Marshall Dojo. He had his thumb up, smiling. He looked like the waiter. The one who had said he did kung fu. The one who's showy style Baek had seen reflected in the moves of his top student. The waiter from the restaurant, who's food was too spicy, and who's manner was too forward and friendly, and who's son was too trusting.

Baek stalked through the writhing bodies. He picked up his jacket, then turned and left.

Author Note: Fight scene heavily inspired by Fist of Fury dojo fight, with some inspiration also from taekwondo fight scenes from The Kick (2011), The King Of The Kickboxers (1990), Dragon Tiger Gate (2006), and City of Violence (2006).