Mon Wei, a lanky but well-dressed middle-aged man with short thinning dark hair, oversized front teeth, acne, and neck spasms that randomly cause his head to jerk to the left, scowls down at the squalor of St. Francis Slums below while smoking a vape. He absolutely despises the poor. He considers them a cancer to society, and if he could get away with it, he would gas every single last one of the peasants like the pests they are.
Mon is watching them through the 17th story window of his posh suite in Wei Grand Tower 3. He has never known poverty yet he is dissatisfied with his wealth and station. This is because there are men on the higher floors, wealthier and more powerful than he. But even more than money and status, what Mon craves the most is respect.
His father, Nemesio Wei, is the White Paper Fan or administrator of the Wei Clan whose responsibility it is to provide financial and business advice to the Dragon Head or leader of the triad. When Mon came of age, Nemesio brought him into the triad and made him his assistant.
However, while the father is respected by both superiors and subordinates, none of that respect has been extended to the son. The men never outright say anything to his face, but Mon can sense the disrespect from how they look and speak to him, no matter how subtle. He even heard a rumor about how they call him the boss's dog to his back.
What Mon doesn't know is that his subordinates don't respect him because he constantly demands respect without making an effort to earn it. Instead, Mon mistakenly thinks that he is being disrespected because he is not pure-blooded. He absolutely detests his grandfather, Wei Zi Chen, for tainting their bloodline by marrying a Filipina. And as a result, Mon has developed a hatred towards all Filipinos.
Suddenly, the administrator's assistant feels a chill race down his spine, and he shivers.
"Goosebumps?" an unfamiliar voice calmly asks him. "It must be because you have a ghost in the room."
Mon is startled by the voice and jumps. He turns from the large window to a shadowed corner on the far side of the dimly lit room and sees a tall and slim young man sitting so comfortably on a recliner, one would think he had been sitting there for hours.
The intruder has dark, disheveled, shoulder length hair. He is wearing a black three-quarter sleeve spandex shirt, leather pants, and paratrooper boots. His skin is deathly white. Two thin, black vertical lines intersect his eyes. There is a scar over the bridge of his nose. His lips are painted black. And there are lines on the corners of his mouth that curve upward to form a smile.
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Mon demanded.
"You may call me Eric," the stranger calmly answers. "As for how I got in here, you left one of the windows open."
"We're on the 17th floor!"
"I don't have a fear of heights."
Eric rises from the chair both swiftly and gracefully. Mon takes a fearful step back, and the vape falls from his trembling fingers.
"What do you want?" he warily asks.
"Well, in order to answer that question, I would need to quote a very close friend of mine," the younger man replies. "People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right." Then, he glares at the older man and adds, "Something really bad happened here, didn't it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about Bea Bernardo."
"Who?"
Eric sighs, "You don't even remember her name."
Mon never even sees the right jab. His head just violently snaps back without him knowing why. Then, he spits two of his bloody teeth onto his palm. Mon had never been hit before, so his initial reaction to the punch is confusion. The pain comes a little later.
He looks up at the taller man and screeches, "You… You hit me!" He isn't pronouncing the words perfectly since losing some teeth has given him a kind of a lisp. "Do you have any idea who I am?!"
"You are an elitist, a racist, and a sadist," Eric responds, still calmly. "And that's just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it?"
"How dare you talk to me like that! I am Mon Wei. Son of-!"
Eric breaks his nose with another right jab. This time, Mon feels the pain instantly. And it is excruciating.
He drops the two teeth, covers his bloodied nose with both hands, and wails, "Son of a bitch!"
Eric casually speaks as though no violence took place, "A little over one year ago, a young Filipina maid started working for you. She was petite, brown skinned, and had long, straight, dark hair that she often wore in a ponytail. Do you remember her now?"
"You just described every Filipina on the planet! How do you expect me to-?!"
Eric is just about to punch him again when Mon cringes and frantically shouts, "Okay, wait, wait, wait! I remember her now!"
When the pale man lowers his fist, the administrator's assistant continues, "Bea Bernardo was a crazy bitch. She threw herself over the balcony and fell 17 floors to her death. I had nothing to do with it."
But Eric counters, "Oh, you didn't kill her yourself, but you certainly had something to do with it. You took her phone and passport. You kept her prisoner here. You berated and tortured her for every little mistake she made. Until one afternoon, she just couldn't live with the physical and emotional abuse any longer and chose the only means of escape left to her."
With his mouth hanging open, Mon just quietly stares at the other man in shock for nearly a minute.
He eventually remembers how to form words and stammers, "H-How did you-? How did you know about all that?"
Eric smirks and tilts his head to the recliner then answers, "The crow told me. He saw everything."
Mon squints at the chair but doesn't find the bird.
The intruder chuckles, "Oh right. I forgot. You can't see him unless he reveals himself to you. He's kind of shy like that."
The boss's dog exclaims, "My God. You're insane!"
Eric thoughtfully looks up at the ceiling for a second then nods his head and says, "Yes. Yes, I do believe I am."
There is a soft knocking on the door followed by a polite but deep female voice, "Everything okay in there, Mr. Wei?"
"Do I sound okay to you, you big dumb cunt?!" Mon shrieks while hurriedly backpedaling from the intruder. "Get in here and save me, you fucking idiots! What the fuck is my father paying you for?!"
Eric calmly says, "Go ahead. Invite other people to the party. The more the merrier, right? But their blood is going to be on your hands, and do you really need more than you already have?"
The door bursts open, and a Chinese woman wearing brass knuckles on her fists enters. She has an impressive physique that could not have been achieved without a high protein diet, hours of intense daily exercise, and plenty of anabolic steroids. There are two men in suits flanking her. One is bald, short, and mean-looking. He wields a dagger in one hand, and he has tattoos of Chinese characters on his face. The other man looks more like an accountant than a bodyguard. His weapon is a hatchet.
"No guns this time," Eric amusedly comments. "That's a nice change of pace for me."
The trio are momentarily stunned by the tall, pale, young man's unusual appearance.
"What are you waiting for?!" Mon yells at them. "Kill the damn freak!"
It is the axman that wakes from his stupor first. He screams and rushes forward with the hatchet raised over his head. Eric effortlessly intercepts him with a big boot to the chest. The accountant crashes into the muscle-bound woman. She roughly shoves him aside.
The bald man is next. He lunges and thrusts with the knife. Eric catches him by the wrist with one hand and twists. The man's small body is flipped into the air. A glass coffee table shatters when he falls on it.
Eric manages to take the dagger from him a second before the woman snarls like a wild animal and charges like a bulldozer. Her shoulder smashes into the pale man's midsection, and she wraps her muscular arms around his waist. She lifts him off the floor and carries him across the room.
A wall cracks as the young man's back is slammed into it. The woman follows up with powerful body blows. Eric tightly wraps his free arm around her neck, putting her in a headlock. Then, he repeatedly plunges the dagger into her back. The woman screams. Blood spurts from her wounds every time the pale man pulls the blade out of her flesh.
She is stabbed 20 times before her big body goes limp. Then, Eric unceremoniously shoves her away with one hand. The dead woman falls heavily, her blood spreading across the floor beneath her.
With eyes bulging with fear, the accountant looks down at his companions. He looks at the intruder. Eric's pale face has been spattered with the woman's blood. When he scowls at the axman, the bodyguard turns and scurries back out the door like a frightened mouse.
Mon yells after him, "Hey! Where are you going?! Get back here!"
He is about to follow the runner, but Eric hurls the dagger and says, "Oh no you don't."
The administrator's son squeals like a scared little girl as a third of the blade is buried into his left butt cheek. He falls forward then groans and starts to crawl away on his belly.
Eric puts on the dead woman's brass knuckles and says, "It was nice of your friends to bring toys to the party."
To his surprise, his prey is not crawling towards the exit. Instead, he is crawling to a desk of what appears to be a home office.
Eric walks after him and asks, "What have you got there, Mon?"
Mon shoves his hand below the desk. Then, he pulls out a QSZ-92 pistol that was taped underneath the table. He rolls sideways so that he is on his back and screams while hysterically squeezing the trigger.
He is a terrible shot. A vase shatters. A lamp falls off an end table. The ceiling light explodes, pitching the already dimly lit room into even more darkness. Nonetheless, he does hit Eric once in the chest, making the pale intruder take one step back.
Mon exults, "Hah! I got you! I got you, you son of a bitch!"
However, the bullet does not fell the younger man. Eric merely looks down at the hole on his shirt, seemingly more annoyed than anything else, then glares at the shooter and growls irritably. The victorious smile vanishes from Mon's lips.
The older man yelps when the younger man nimbly steps forward and kicks the gun out of his hand before he can take another shot. Eric places a knee on his prey's chest to pin him to the floor.
Mon hysterically screams, "What the hell are you?!"
The intruder impatiently answers, "I already answered that question when I gave you that quote about the crow, and I really don't like repeating myself."
He savagely punches the White Paper Fan's son in the face with a right fist covered in brass. He follows up with a left. Then a right again. And another left. Mon squeals like a pig with each punch. The inside of his mouth gets all cut up, and he coughs out more of his blood and teeth on the floor.
Eric pauses and says, "You know, this would be the part where I quote a piece of poetry. I really like poetry, Mon. Do you?"
Mon sobs, "S-Stop! Please stop!"
"Bea begged you to stop, too. Many times. Did you show her any mercy? I don't think you did."
"She was clumsy and uneducated. I was trying to teach her a lesson. Hurting her was the only way to make sure she'd remember. It was for her own good!"
"You're doing a horrible job of convincing me to stop punching you."
"Okay, wait! WAIT! I have money. What was Bea to you? A girlfriend or something? I can give you enough money to attract 50 girlfriends!"
"I had a girlfriend once. A fiancee actually. She wasn't Bea though. I've never met Bea Bernardo in my life."
"W-WHAT?! Then, why go through all this?! Why risk the wrath of the triad?!"
"Because what you did to your maid was very wrong. The crow decided that someone had to make things right. But the problem is Bea didn't have anyone. She grew up in an orphanage. She was also very introverted. No friends, no family, no boyfriend. And the crow couldn't bring back Bea herself. She didn't have it in her. Too nice. So the crow reactivated me. There were others to choose from, but let's face it, I'm the only one that really matters."
Mon shakes his head and whimpers, "Y-You're not making any sense. I don't understand-"
"That's okay. You don't need to understand," Eric soothingly reassures him. "You only need to bleed some more. And then you need to die."
"No. No! NO! Help me! Somebody, help me!"
Mon starts struggling, so the pale revenger holds him down with a left hand. Then, Eric resumes the punishment by viciously punching the boss's dog with his right fist. Mon's left eyebrow is gashed. The eye below it is swollen shut. The skin over the cheekbone is ripped open, painting half his face red.
When the hunter takes another break, the prey groggily mumbles through puffed lips, "P-Please… Please don't kill me…"
Eric lowers his fist and thinks for a couple of seconds.
Then, he says, "Yeah, okay. Why not?"
Mon can't believe what he just heard. His good eye opens wide in surprise.
"R-Really?!" he exclaims hopefully.
"Sure. I mean, you didn't actually kill Bea, right? You only made her want to die," Eric answers. Then, he adds in a sinister voice, "So that's what I'm leaving you. Every time you look in the mirror, you're going to remember how I cowed you, how I made you lose face. And that's a big deal in your organization, isn't it?"
The revenger stands up, turns, and walks away towards the shadows. Mon hears a caw, and he is both surprised and frightened to see a crow fly from the backrest of the recliner to perch on the intruder's shoulder.
Then, Eric and the bird vanish. Mon doesn't even know how they were able to exit the room. Perhaps they went over the balcony where Bea threw herself from a year ago.
The boss's dog grunts in pain as he forces himself to sit up. After a few minutes spent deep in thought, he reaches for the pistol on the floor.
END
