#01_Playground of the Beast (2)

1.

Humans cannot know each other’s true selves.

No matter how much you love someone, no matter how keen your observation or quick your wit, it is incredibly difficult to see through to the depths of the mind, lodged deep in the subconscious.

There are no exceptions, even if it’s your own.

Yuchan was able to directly perceive these attributes of humanity, which should have been confined to the pitch-black darkness.

Innate temperament and nature as form (狀).

Ever-changing emotions and psychology as color (色).

From the beginning, the black boxes of others didn’t appear in a definite form.

At first, they only appeared as a mere array of faint colors.

At that time, he didn’t know what they meant.

Amidst the flickering lights of different shapes and colors, he merely felt a sense of beauty.

Gather them more and more,

For himself alone,

To shine forever,

He wanted to trap them in a glass bottle,

He only thought of that.

2.

Work starts at 10 AM.

Having free time in the morning, unlike most office workers, was a great merit.

Nevertheless, Yuchan got into his car with a lunch box in the pitch-dark dawn.

It’s a Korean SUV worth about 30 million won used.

It was the first thing he bought after inheriting the estate from his uncle-nim, whom he could call his only family.

It was a massive inheritance that would have allowed him to buy a much more expensive car, but he felt that buying a car at a higher price would be a luxury.

He warmed the coldly chilled seat with his body temperature and started the engine a little later.

There’s a place to stop by before going to exercise.

If you need to throw away bones or rotten meat left over from boiling beef bones at home, you can just put them in the food waste bin.

But if it’s a human corpse, you don’t know what kind of trouble might arise if you carelessly throw it away in the food waste bin in front of your house.

Disposing of a corpse is tricky.

To dissolve it with acid, you have to endure a large amount of toxic gas and foul odors.

And does it melt down neatly and liquefy?

It doesn’t.

Cremation (火葬).

There are various sizes from 40kg to over 100kg, but regardless of weight, sufficient firepower and temperature are required to turn a human into ashes.

Therefore, on hold.

Burial (土葬).

Korea has many mountains. As such, there are many good burial sites that are out of people’s sight.

But it’s a country with many floods.

Contrary to the image, there are also many wild animals trying to dig up the lump of meat buried in the ground.

In either case, if the corpse is dragged out of the ground, the police will track it down.

Burial using concrete.

After death, the corpse begins to decompose blood and protein after a certain period of time.

Gases containing sulfur inflate the corpse, break the already hardened concrete, and spread foul odors everywhere.

It’s the worst choice.

Without proper equipment or special tricks, the only way to navigate the gaps in the strict security was to be diligent.

As he took the Jayuro highway and got a little out of Ilsan, the scenery of Paju, full of rice paddies and fields, came into view.

There are many quiet roads here, and many agricultural waterways flowing along the roads.

Meat that is only about 800g of ground Tomahawk steak is not even enough for the daily food of a school of piranhas.

Yuchan, who parked his car under a quiet street lamp, twisted the lunch box and scraped out the well-kneaded meat lump like hamburger batter with a spoon.

It seems necessary to prepare another mixer.

It seems like it would attract attention for a single man to buy several mixers. I’ve been making and replacing the blades to use, but the motor burned out from overload a while ago.

It’s a regrettable thing.

Yuchan, who watched the red and white flesh sink below the purgatory-colored surface of the water until the end, turned his car around and headed to the gym near the academy.

Physical and mental training is always important.

He believed in the saying that a healthy mind resides in a healthy body.

“Hyung-nim, you’re here early again today. Did you go for another drive?”

The trainer, who was dozing off at the counter, greets him happily.

I forgot his name, but about two years after seeing his face recently, they became close enough to have light small talk.

“The dawn air is good, you know?”

“That’s true, but being a gym keeper from dawn is also a chore.”

As he changed his clothes and lay down on the bench, the trainer flirted next to him.

I guess his mouth is itching from guarding the gym from dawn when there’s no one around.

“Hyung-nim, there’s a bodybuilding competition at City Hall soon, are you thinking of entering?”

“I’m not interested. What would a regular person like me do there?”

“Then why are you working so hard? I feel a sense of crisis when I see you, hyung-nim?”

Because it wasn’t exercise to increase the size of his muscles, it wasn’t very noticeable over his clothes, but Yuchan’s body, wearing Under Armour, was well-trained like a carnivore.

The trainer, feeling that Yuchan, who only exercises silently without saying anything, was a waste, recommended him to enter big and small competitions whenever he had a chance.

“It’s a hobby, a hobby.”

“It’s a waste. If you just controlled your diet for about a month, you could aim for the championship.”

“I’m not interested.”

After putting up with him chattering next to him for a while, they went up to the rooftop together to smoke a cigarette and then finished exercising.

3.

The time after the workout was ambiguous to kill time somewhere, so he ended up going to work around 8:30.

“Yuchan-ssaem, good morning!”

“Semyeong, you’re not late today?”

“It’s because I missed the shuttle last time, you know?”

As he walked around the academy with a book to read during his free time, some students greeted him first.

A reasonably handsome appearance and sociable personality.

Thanks to his easygoing nature that blends well into the atmosphere without any particularly sharp edges, he was popular within the academy.

Moreover, he was very good at giving various consultations, so many students were already dependent on him.

In fact, counselors need to maintain intimacy with clients during counseling, but they also need to draw a line outside of counseling.

He knows that his job is, when you get down to it, listening to kids’ complaints, so he’s never seriously thought about it.

He greets each person and passes through the hallway, opening the door to the counseling room in the corner of the academy and entering.

The smoothly opening door is made of solid wood, apparently for a luxurious image.

The small counseling room, about 5 pyeong, was decorated to suit his tastes.

The window with blinds and the desk in front of it, and the books filling the bookcase attached to the wall, create an intellectual atmosphere.

In the front, there is a sofa and a knee-height table where he can face the client, and a folding bed is placed in one corner, where he can enjoy a nap or occasionally sleep at the academy.

“Hello.”

There was a guest.

Her name is Choi Naye.

She is a quiet student with her hair tied in two braids and draped long over her chest.

Even though she always wears round gold-rimmed glasses, if she enters university and dresses up a little, she is a child with excellent raw material whose position as the goddess of the engineering department is not a dream.

“I heard from the kids that you’re a good counselor, Teacher-nim. I have something I want to talk about, would that be okay?”

“First, sit down a little more? You should have turned on the heater. It’s cold.”

The counseling room, where the air had been cold all night, was chilly, so he handed her a lap blanket.

Naye thanked him quietly and wrapped the blanket tightly around her legs.

He hands her a freshly brewed coffee and sits across from her on the sofa.

“What’s wrong?”

It was her first time visiting the counseling room.

He’s happy because she was one of the students he had been watching.

He provides warm coffee and comfortable silence for the client who can’t easily open her mouth.

Choi Naye, who glanced at him and read his expression, carefully opened her mouth.

“It’s not a story related to studying… Can I tell you?”

“Of course, how could a test taker’s worries be just about studying? The words you hear here are a secret only Naye-yang and I know, so slowly tell me from the part you want to talk about.”

Pretending to wait for her, he carefully peeks into her black box.

The form is a salmon.

All Yuchan can see are the form and color.

Deriving meaning from there depends entirely on his observation skills and interpretation of symbols.

The symbolism of salmon.

First, vitality.

When applied to a person, it also means an unwavering will.

Contrary to her delicate impression, it can be seen that she has a strong belief.

Second, regression.

Salmon live in the sea, but when it’s spawning season, they return to the river to lay their eggs and die.

This meant that Choi Naye values the past when judging her life.

No matter how happy she is, she will constantly regret and long for the past.

She will mutter things like, ‘I should have done better then,’ or ‘I think I was happier then.’

After roughly grasping her nature, he examines the color.

Teal or jade.

Teal is far from passion or warmth.

It symbolizes caution, indifference, loneliness, and distrust.

Right now, she is contemplating her situation while harboring constant distrust towards others.

The color is quite murky.

This meant that she had been maintaining a constant color for quite a long time.

In other words, it’s a problem that has been dragging on for almost several months.

“There’s no need to rush. If you’re not ready yet, shall we start with a comfortable story?”

“Ah? Yes.”

In this case, it is more important to build intimacy with the client than to listen to her concerns right away.

Even if she came after much deliberation, forcing her to speak is counterproductive.

She will barely open her mouth only after giving her trust first.

“Naye-ssi, what’s your hobby?”

“Yes? Weren’t we going to talk about studying?”

“It’s okay. You’ve been studying on your own until after 10 o’clock every day these days, right? You come to the academy the earliest.”

“How did you know?”

“I’m always keeping a close eye on the students. That’s my job. Naye-yang is a diligent and hardworking student among them.”

“Thank you.”

She seems embarrassed by the light praise and touches her mouth with a small gesture.

“If I had to pick a hobby… it’s swimming. I go to the indoor swimming pool every weekend and do it for about 2 hours.”

“Swimming?”

“Yes, physical fitness is also important.”

The fact that even her hobby is part of her exam preparation shows how sincere and exemplary she is.

For a while, he gave her appropriate responses as she bragged about how much her records had improved.

Choi Naye hardly opens her mouth at the academy.

Even after two months since the start of the semester, she always eats alone and doesn’t even have friends.

It’s to focus on studying, but she must have been quite lonely in the meantime.

Naye, who was in a good mood thanks to Yuchan’s eloquence that makes people feel comfortable, excitedly shared her recent events in detail.

“…So I guess I have a good appetite these days.”

“You’re not going to say that eating hard is also a test taker’s duty, are you?”

“Of course not.”

Naye’s face, which had been smiling, hardens.

The teal salmon, which had been still, creates small ripples and flutters.

She’s been chatting for about an hour, so it’s time to slowly bring up the main point.

“I was really worried for a long time about whether I should tell you.”

“Tell me anything. I don’t know how much I can do, but I’ll try to help as much as I can within my reach.”

“You have to keep the secret.”

Naye, clenching her fist with a desperate look, opened her mouth after several hesitations.

Her story that started that way was about counseling about her boyfriend.

There was a man she had been dating for about a year since high school.

She had been dating him since she was a senior in high school, and it seems that their relationship had developed to the point of having sex.

But her boyfriend, who she thought was a college student, was a common delinquent who had dropped out of high school, and it seems that he showed his true colors whenever they got closer.

In the end, all of their young love was exhausted, and she had to prepare for the college entrance exam again, so she broke up with him two months ago.

“But…”

Naye, who had been calmly telling her situation, took off her glasses and wiped away her tears.

Perhaps because she was quite agitated, the joints of her words began to tremble slowly.

“My…my boyfriend has a video of us having sex… and he keeps telling me to meet him… or he’ll spread it all…”

“Calm down, calm down. I think you can stop there.”

He patted Naye, who was sobbing with her shoulders shaking, on the back while she calmed down.

When the story of her boyfriend came out, there was a somewhat anticlimactic aspect.

It’s a more serious and troublesome problem than I thought.

“I didn’t know that… I didn’t think he was that kind of person.”

The best solution is to report it to the police.

But the reason she can’t do that is probably because she’s afraid of the distribution.

Even if the police step in late, it’s impossible to recover if the perpetrator spreads the video on the internet.

How can you erase all the videos floating around on so many sites?

“It’s not your fault.”

“Teacher-nim, what should I do? I don’t know anything. I’m so scared and tired…”

He checked to see if there were people passing by in the hallway.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Normally, no matter how serious the case is, he would have just coaxed her and told her to report it to the police.

But Yuchan knew how to solve this problem.

It’s somewhat illegal, and Yuchan himself could be harmed if he’s not careful.

“Yes?”

“Can you tell me that friend’s contact information and name?”

“No, you don’t have to do that much for me.”

“Naye-yang is mature, but she’s still a student. Leave this to an adult.”

It wasn’t some paltry sense of justice.

He doesn’t care about that in the first place.

So what is the reward he can get?

A deep relationship with her.

Not just a relationship that draws a line between counselor and client, but a secondary relationship (移差關係).

It’s a good starting point for a more intimate and sticky relationship.

Is Choi Naye a flower worth taking on this trouble and holding in his hand?

The answer is YES.