Convict Unit: Black Parade

Seoul Rock Festival 2050.

“…”

In the taxi on the way to the concert, Ghost stared at the words printed on the ticket and murmured to herself.

“It’s 2050 already…”

She let out a long breath and sank back into her seat.

“Feels like just yesterday the first Gate opened and the Busan Rock Fest got canceled. Thirty years have flown by.”

Beside her, Jae-hee Han was practically bouncing in his seat with excitement. “When did the first Gate open?” he asked.

“2020.”

“Wow, so it’s been exactly thirty years.”

“It has. It’s really been that long.” Ghost smiled bitterly. “Back then, I was the same as you…”

Jae-hee tilted his head. “Your height? Did you shrink?”

“My age, you little shit.”

The taxi stopped in the Mapo District, in an area known as Hongdae Street.

Though Hongik University had been leveled early in the Gate crisis, people still called the street Hongdae—a holdover from a lingering nostalgia for what the place used to be. A street brimming with youth, good food, live performances, and the air of freedom.

“The venue… Let’s see, it should be around here somewhere.”

Wandering through the alleyways, Ghost searched for the address on the ticket until she finally found it: a sign for the Seoul Rock Festival propped up at the entrance to the basement of a dilapidated, crumbling building.

“This is it.”

“This is where they’re holding a rock festival?”

The building was a wreck, but the stairs leading down to the basement were colorfully decorated. A thunderous beat pulsed from within, a physical vibration you could feel in your chest.

Jae-hee started hopping in place. “This is awesome! It’s my first concert ever!”

Unlike Jae-hee, who was thrilled by his long list of firsts, Ghost wore a complicated expression as she quietly eyed the stairs leading down to the cramped basement venue.

Jae-hee studied her cautiously. “Are you okay, Master?”

“…Of course I’m okay.” With a wry smile, Ghost led the way. “Let’s go.”

Down the stairs, the basement venue was small. Even packed to the gills, it probably couldn’t hold more than a hundred people.

But to Jae-hee, who had never been to a concert before, it felt enormous. His jaw dropped as he took in the scene.

A stage occupied a third of the dark basement space, bathed in pale light from above, the sides, and below…

“Whoa, this is incredible!”

Deeply moved by who-knows-what, Jae-hee started bouncing again. “This is amazing, Master! Amazing! I can’t believe a place like this exists!”

“Well… for these times, a setup of this quality is pretty impressive.”

Surveying the small but lovingly decorated stage, Ghost muttered under her breath. “Back in the day, it was truly something else.”

“Back in the day?”

“Yeah. The old rock fests… they were no joke.”

Her gaze drifted toward the distant past.

“At huge outdoor venues, rock stars from all over the world would gather and sing, and tens of thousands of fans would sing along with them…”

There was such a time.

A time when countless people gathered in one place for the simple reason of listening to the music they loved.

Ghost blinked, and the vision of that era scattered like a dream.

The world had been torn to shreds after the Gates. An event of that scale would never happen again.

In a harsh new reality where just getting by was a struggle, the countless rock stars who had once shone in the night sky had all vanished from the world.

“…”

They had arrived well before the show started, so the venue was initially empty, but guests soon began to trickle in. Thanks to their early arrival, Ghost and Jae-hee were able to secure a spot right at the front of the standing section.

Ghost handed Jae-hee the pamphlet she’d picked up with their tickets. “I’m going to use the restroom before the show. Stay here.”

“Yessir.”

While Ghost was away, Jae-hee looked over the set list for the day’s performance. 

He naturally didn’t know any of the bands or any of the songs. Still, he was so nervous about his first-ever concert that he was tapping his foot.

Eventually, the sound of a familiar gait approached from the side.

Ghost must be back, he thought, turning casually.

And then he froze.

“…”

“Everything okay?”

It was Ghost. It was definitely her, but… her fashion was a little—no, a lot—different than before she’d gone to the restroom.

Her eyes were rimmed with smoky makeup. She wore a spiked choker around her neck and a spiked bracelet on her wrist. Her fingers were adorned with all sorts of glittering rings linked together by chains.

She had changed into a black shirt, this one ripped in several places and emblazoned with a massive skull.

And the hair she had tied back so neatly on the way here was once again a wild mess…

An awkward silence hung in the air.

Jae-hee couldn’t help but ask, “Who are you?”

“It’s me.”

“No, I mean, huh? Master?”

His brain knew it was her, but it refused to process the image. In a different sense, she truly looked like a ghost.

The style she was sporting—the makeup, the clothes—was what people used to call emo punk.

It was a style Jae-hee had never seen before, but one thing was certain even to his untrained eye: it had gone out of fashion a long, long time ago.

“This is what I’ve always worn to rock fests.”

Ghost let out a small laugh and flicked her white hair back from her face. “This is how I show my resolve.”

“Huh? Huuuuh?”

Just as a bewildered sound escaped Jae-hee’s lips…

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

The speakers on stage blasted a beat so intense it shook his entire body.

The crowd, which had since filled the venue, roared in unison. The curtain behind the stage was flung open, and the first band of the festival stormed out.

Drums, bass, guitar, keyboard, and vocals—a five-man band of middle-aged guys—whipped up the crowd, waving their hands along with the opening riff.

Unsure of what was happening, Jae-hee just looked around frantically as Ghost shot both her hands into the air.

“Alright, then… since we’re here, shall we raise a little hell?”

“Huuuh? Huuuuuuuuh?”

“Kid.”

The colored lights pierced through Ghost’s disheveled white hair, painting her face in vibrant hues.

Ghost beamed, lips curling into a mischievous grin he’d never seen before.

“You scream, too!”

With an ear-splitting guitar riff, the first song of the Seoul Rock Festival 2050 officially began.

“Waaaaaaaaah!”

The crowd let out a collective roar that threatened to bring the building down.

Even Ghost, all her cool composure forgotten, squeezed her eyes shut and let out a high-pitched scream, her face flushed with excitement.

Jae-hee stared at her, dumbfounded.

“…”

If the world of thirty years ago had continued, if a disaster like the Gates had never destroyed this world, and with it, people’s ordinary lives…

Would Ghost have always been like this?

Like any other person her age, simply loving the music she loved. A normal person.

“Wooooooh—!”

The audience threw their hands in the air and started jumping to the rhythm. Ghost joined in, whipping her head back and forth as she leaped up and down.

Ah, screw it.

Jae-hee followed her lead, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a scream with all his might.

“Kreeeeehhhh!”

A bizarre shriek erupted from him, like a quokka that had blindly stepped on a Lego.

***

Late that night. After the concert, in a small park near the venue.

It was more of an unkempt vacant lot than a proper park, but at least there was a bench where they could sit and rest.

As Jae-hee sat sprawled on the bench, utterly exhausted, Ghost walked over and handed him a bottle of water.

“Drink.”

“Thaaank youuu…” Jae-hee gratefully chugged the water, his head spinning. “Wow, just watching a concert is draining…”

He’d felt some kind of obligation to react, so he’d cheered so enthusiastically that he’d used up all his energy.

Smiling silently, Ghost casually tied back her sweat-drenched hair. Feeling a drop in blood sugar, she unwrapped a piece of candy and popped it in her mouth.

Jae-hee took out one of his own and did the same.

“It was 2008,” Ghost said, sitting down next to him on the bench. She spoke of an event more than forty years ago in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

“I was still in elementary school. I ended up going to a concert with my older cousin.”

“Oh?”

“Her friend, who was supposed to go with her, got into an accident or something. So I got the ticket and went with my cousin instead.”

This was the first time Jae-hee had ever heard a story from Ghost’s past, and he listened intently.

“My cousin kept telling me how lucky I was, that I’d seized a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I was indifferent. I wasn’t interested in concerts, and I didn’t even know who the band was.”

Ghost squeezed her smoky-lidded eyes shut for a moment.

“The band’s name was My Chemical Romance.”

She seemed to be dredging up an old, faded memory, trying to recall that day as vividly as possible.

“They were a rock band, MCR for short. It was their first and last concert in Korea.”

A faint smile touched her lips as she recalled the distant past.

“In the middle of the show, the vocalist, Gerard Way, sprayed water into the crowd. My cousin got hit by it and was ecstatic, like she’d been baptized. But me…”

Ghost’s blue eyes slowly opened.

“It was only after getting hit by that water that I snapped out of it.”

“…”

“I had been completely mesmerized by the concert, by the band’s music. It was the first time I even knew such a world existed.”

Jae-hee pictured it for a moment.

More than forty years ago, a young girl—still in elementary school, called by a normal name instead of a callsign like Ghost—had tagged along to a concert by chance and witnessed a performance that would change the entire course of her life.

“That’s when my life as a rock-poser—uh, ahem.” Ghost cleared her throat. “My life as a rock chick began.”

“A r-rock chick life…?”

“I could never forget that experience. I became a wandering specter, haunting every single rock festival held in Korea.”

Jae-hee pictured it again.

Ghost, growing up through middle school, high school, and college, going to concerts every year. Shaking her head to the music in this makeup, in these clothes.

He burst out laughing. “I never knew you had this side to you…”

“You think I was born a sword-wielding convict? I had a perfectly normal youth, you know.”

Ghost scratched her chin, looking embarrassed.

“Well, maybe not perfectly normal. Looking back, it was an embarrassing and childish time… but isn’t that what being young is for? The freedom to live like that.”

If the Gates had never opened… perhaps Ghost would have held a guitar instead of a blade.

Perhaps she would have lived a more trivial, insignificant, and happy life.

“It’s all in the past now.”

Crunching on her candy, Ghost looked up at the distant sky.

“Learning English by fighting with international anti-fans in keyboard battles all night, haggling with scalpers after failing to get tickets, arguing in bars about which genre was real rock… it’s all just meaningless chatter now.”

Her voice grew quiet. “Now… it’s just something I miss.”

Dressed in clothes that had gone out of style forty years ago, Ghost murmured, “Just the fact that I once loved something so passionately… that’s what I miss.”

After a moment of silence, Ghost suddenly asked, “So, kid. What did you think of the show today?”

“Huh?”

“What did you think, seeing a band for the first time?”

This modest performance, held under the grand name of a rock festival…

But in a dying world, this parade of bands might have been the largest concert that would ever be held again.

The boy who had been invited was still dazed.

Ghost smiled gently. “Do you think you’ve gotten a feel for what rock is now?”

“…”

Her smile was so benevolent, it felt as if she would embrace any answer he gave.

So, after a moment’s thought, Jae-hee said, “Um, in my opinion, rock is…”

He beamed, speaking his honest feelings.

“A lot like trot music!”

Smack!

Ghost’s fist flew out and cracked him across the jaw.