Mercenary Black Mamba

The labor sentence in Novatopia was not the same thing as the sloppy one in Korea. The labor was real. It was only applied to inmates with sentences longer than three years. As an objective punishment, with deliberate criminal intent, murder, theft, burglary, rape, arson, fraud, extortion, and embezzlement were offenses subject to it.

The criminal laborers were, in a desert isolated from the outside world, tasked with rock excavation, planting jatrophas, waterway maintenance, road maintenance, and hay harvesting. If one didn't fulfill one's daily quota, one was not fed. It wasn't just a meal. In the desert, with great calorie-burning activities for extended hours, a meal meant life itself. They needed to work to survive.

The life sentence with labor was introduced by Mu Ssang's "We have no spare manpower to kill!" It replaced capital punishment. If one committed the same offense three times or more, one was also subject to a life sentence with labor. This was different from Korea, where repeat offenders were given second chances again and again.

Novatopia was too busy a country to discuss the human rights of criminals. The criminal laborers had their cheeks branded and were even whipped. Even the most vicious criminal, after a year of labor in the desert, became as docile as a sheep. 'No human rights for the vile criminals!' Dubaiburupa had a simple sense of justice.

"There they are!"

The wife was in her mid-40s and the elder daughter seemed to be in her early twenties. The younger daughter was wearing a high school uniform. At a glance, they didn't seem to be in great condition. They stank and their clothes were dirty, suggesting they couldn't properly do laundry. It was not an ordeal anyone should be subject to in this merciless summer heat.

'You got lucky, or not?'

The high schooler was full of fear, but the elder daughter, who barely escaped rape, was too calm. Fingerprint or iris scanning has a margin of error of one-millionth, but Dimensional Sight discerned someone's energy with perfect accuracy. It was surely the elder daughter that Mu Ssang saved in the showers. He was not sure if she was extraordinarily brave or just a very carefree soul, but it meant she was used to such a situation. It was not Mu Ssang's business to meddle further.

"This is the great man I talked about. Say hello."

The sisters, overwhelmed by a rare sight of a man exhaling cigarette smoke leaning against an imported car, were reluctant despite their father's insistence. Their hair was stuck together in thick bunches with sebum and their clothes were dirty at the seams. It was not something sensitive young women should be subject to.

"Nice to meet you."

Mu Ssang greeted them first.

"Thank you for helping us."

The wife thanked him with a barely audible voice. The two daughters nodded slightly then stayed cautious. The three women's eyes kept scanning their surroundings. 'They must be looking out for the thugs!' Mu Ssang lamented internally. The women were pickled in anxiety and mistrust and grew to be ever vigilant.

"Do not worry about a thing now."

Overcome with emotion, Mu Ssang caressed the high schooler's hair.

"Aargh!"

The girl screamed and flinched. Mu Ssang, startled, took off his hand. It had been a long time since he was treated as such. He felt embarrassed as if he became a pervert.

"Damned girl. I am sorry. She ended up becoming neurotic because of the thugs' continued harassment. I am really sorry."

Kim Gi-taek joined his hands together and apologized.

"No. I should have been more considerate."

Mu Ssang realized that when someone was extremely vigilant and cautious like an agitated hedgehog, his interference fields didn't work. If the natural flow of the energy fields was blocked, he could influence their brain with Resonance Wave which was a form-resonant energy field, but could never get them to like him naturally. Even Buddha and Jesus, who could wield energy fields with great mastery, couldn't mesmerize everyone. Mu Ssang hurled their luggage filled with clothes into the trunk and opened the back door.

"Don't worry, ma'am. Let's go to my place first."

"I am sorry that we became your burden."

The wife's feeble voice was trembling. She couldn't even meet Mu Ssang's eyes just like her daughters. How much harassment did they endure to end up in such a state? They needed rest and relaxation first and foremost. The Citroën went back the way it came and headed for Eungsim-je.

The front gate opened with a prolonged buzz. The car charged across the lawn and stopped in front of the main house. It was many hours past midnight yet the house had unexpected guests.

"Ah!"

Yeong-ji was thrilled. The vast, seemingly endless lawn. The majestic traditional Korean house. The endless succession of lamps illuminated the dark with their orange light. The property was on a par with the manors in foreign countries she saw on television. The glinting imported car. The picturesquely beautiful man. The manor right out of a fairy tale. Was this a dream? Yeong-ji pinched her arm. It wasn't a dream.

"Yeong-hee!"

Yeong-ji looked back at her elder sister. Yeong-hee was too mesmerized to answer. Her eyes took in the fantasy manifested into a reality. The magic she longed for dearly, was here now. The thug that attacked her in the common showers was cursed. The most perfect man appeared with an expensive imported car. And now she was here, in front of the dreamy palace. She was Cinderella. Now, the only thing left in the course was to be proposed to by a prince. Yeong-hee, in her disturbed psychological state, kept chasing her unrealistic imagination.

"You are late, Mu Ssang."

The three beauties from the main house shattered the sisters' imagination that seemed to go on endlessly.

"Things turned out to be such."

"You must be tired."

"Shall we massage your shoulders?"

Yeon Soon and Gye Soon each clung to Mu Ssang's shoulder.

"You must be out of pocket money," Mu Ssang said.

"Haha. No way!"

"You will have better luck lying to a ghost. It's written on your foreheads."

"Haha. We go out to Seong Sim Won for volunteer work tomorrow."

"Is that so? I'll give you some money. Buy some water toys for the children and some watermelons too."

"Thank you, Mu Ssang! Who are they?"

"Say hello. This is the Kim family."

Mu Ssang answered simply to Gye Soon's question.

"We are sorry to bother you this late at night."

Kim Gi-taek's wife bowed deeply. The heartwarming scene of a young man surrounded by women was heart-wrenching to her. It reminded her of her shattered family. She was still feeling like they could never return to their happy days.

"Welcome! We still have a lot of rooms to fill. Only a lunatic can be happy on their own. Don't feel sorry at all."

Jin Soon smiled widely.

"Papa!"

Mina appeared, rubbing her eyes.

"My puppy is up!"

Mu Ssang took Mina in his arms and lifted her up.

"Yes. It was noisy here. Did you get the teddy bear?"

Mina extended her hand. Mu Ssang feigned a worried face.

"I was too busy today! Oh, well. I will get it tomorrow."

"You broke your promise! You shall get a Snoopy too."

"Of course. I will get him too."

Yeong-hee's eyes were filled with disappointment. A spoiled young girl. A mock-worried man. Even a fool could see that they were a daughter and her father. Yeong-hee, momentarily lost in the dream of Cinderella-come-true, felt like it was raining in her heart.

'She is in quite a state...'

Mu Ssang glanced at Yeong-hee. Moments ago, she was as happy as a child. Now, she looked as sad as the protagonist of a tragedy. Her brain waves, scanned by Dimensional Sight, were as unstable as a lunatic woman dancing. The schizoaffective disorder was as pesky as dissociative amnesia. The bastards that turned a healthy young woman into that kind of a mess, deserved a deathly blow of Rakshasa.

The sisters awoken from their sweet slumber didn't ask any questions. If Mu Ssang did something, there must be a reason. Time was going to tell them. Yeon Soon and Gye Soon brought their luggage to the biggest outhouse. Jin Soon led the miserable-looking three women to the bathroom of the main house.

"Mu Ssang, do you need some light meal to go with liquor?"

Yeon Soon asked, reading the air.

"No. Get some of my clothes for the sir. Tend to the women as well."

"Underwear too?"

"Yes. It is late but we need proper dinner too."

"I see!"

Yeon Soon headed for the kitchen.

"Whoa!"

Yeong-ji exclaimed unconsciously. It was a big building from the outside but from the inside, it was even wider than that. The high ceiling and open space alleviated her depressed mood greatly.

"Can I refer to you as Sis?"

"Or what? Do I look like a Gran?"

Jin Soon looked back and grinned. Yeong-ji was dazzled. She had a great body, was pretty, and was kind.

"Thank you."

Yeong-ji's face bloomed. Her perpetual, nagging anxiety evaporated without a trace. Jin Soon splashed the heated pebble with water. Steam rose like a cumulus. The sauna room was filled with hot steam at once.

"Whoa!"

The three women, surprised, retreated to the door.

"Bathe first. This is a Finnish sauna room designed by Mu Ssang himself. He is quite capable and wealthy so you don't have to worry about wasting water. There is cold water in the tub. If you keep pouring it onto the pebble, you can bathe in the steam. Once your bodies are heated up, you can wash with the cold water for quite a deep relaxation. If you want to bathe in hot water, go into that inner door. There is a tub filled with hot water. I will leave the underwear and nightgowns in front of the dressing room. I will see you after the bath."

Jin Soon had finished explaining but the three women couldn't bring themselves to answer properly. They were awestruck by the suddenly changed circumstances. It was like a sudden transition from a night terror to a sweet dream.

"Mom, this bathroom is bigger than the living room of our old house. How rich do they have to be to have a bathroom this big?"

"Hey, do I look like I have any idea? Maybe we are all possessed by a spirit. Bathe first. Do not waste water."

Mrs. Yang, as usual, filled a washbasin with water. Yeong-ji looked at her disapprovingly and turned on the showerhead.

"How will we ever pay back this favor?"

Mrs. Yang, covering herself with hot water, welled up.

"If this is a dream, I don't ever want to wake up," Yeong-hee muttered.

This was the first hot shower in two months. She felt as if her body's fatigue was melting away. She was feeling ecstatic at the simple fact that she could bathe as much as she wanted in hot water. Her tears mixed in the hot water from the showerhead. 'This must be a dream!' The same sentence that she said in her head when they fled from their own home replayed with a completely different feeling.

"Don't waste water!"

"You surprised me!"

Yeong-hee, pulled out from her reverie by her mother's scolding, began to wash her stuck-together hair.

Yeong-ji submerged herself in the bathtub. The hot water smelled of roses. She was happy. Even if she needed to give her own life, she would never want to return to the stinky and wormy inn room. She closed her eyes and hummed.

"Even if life fools you, don't be sad or angry. If you endure sad days, a happy day will eventually come. The mind lives in the future. The present moment is a profoundly gloomy one. Everything passes. The passed one becomes a nostalgia."

Tears streaked down her face. She never expected the framed poem on the living room wall to move her this profoundly. The factory abruptly went bankrupt. Everything that she took for granted disappeared and became broken. Their home disappeared. Their father disappeared. Their ample pocket money disappeared. The dishes that she didn't like disappeared. The thugs appeared. They had debts!

The men called loan sharks didn't know day from night. They came to them at any moment and insulted them and broke their furniture. Their mother's plea fell on deaf ears. They only screamed at them to pay their debts. Their behavior started to take on a perverted tone one day. They appeared out of nowhere and touched their breasts and tapped their crotch. Their mother, trying to stop them, was kicked and rolled on the ground. The shame made her want to kill herself but her fear was greater. When her sister screamed in the next room, she really wanted to die.

They signed a contract that said "Renouncement of Bodily Rights." That day, they ran away in the middle of the night. In a hurry, they had to leave most of their clothes behind. Their father took them to a cheap inn. The room measured less than 10 square meters and stank. The wall was covered with mold. The damp comforters were filled with trashy material. Cockroaches streaked across the floor and centipedes crawled out of the cracks in the wall. It was hell.

There was no private bathroom. They had to wash in the common showers. There were no showerheads in the space. She suffered more from not being able to bathe than from hunger. They had to take turns to be on a lookout as another bathed in the middle of the night. For the past week, they couldn't even wash their hair because some pervert snooped on them.

They spent two months in the narrow room with instant ramen noodles and sometimes lack thereof. They couldn't go to school. They couldn't meet their friends. She found herself eyeing the big nailhead on the wall in place of a closet. She had just decided to get a length of sturdy rope when his father appeared. She both resented and welcomed him. She wept.

Her father didn't give her time to cry. He brought the three out of the inn in a hurry. The tall man, leaning against a car, smoking, looked like a loan shark. They always got there on a car and made a mess as they smoked. Her legs gave way in fear that she was going to be robbed of her intestines and die that night.

She envisioned her own body sprawled on the bed like a ragdoll, robbed of all vital organs: eyes, kidneys, liver, etc. When he touched her head, she thought she was going to die. Her father had said that he was someone that was helping them but she couldn't bring herself to believe it. She could believe no one. The loan sharks pretended to be the police or the civil workers from the town hall or someone else.

She still had lingering doubts, but the house didn't seem to be a loan shark's. If God or the Buddha existed, they would have never allowed a loan shark to live in such a lovely house. Otherwise, her resentment was going to consume her. A loan shark wouldn't have three beautiful sisters and a cute daughter. The man was too handsome to be a loan shark. She felt like she could forgive him even if he was. Yeong-ji, in her relaxed state, dozed off.