Chapter 59: S#10. Deer in the Woods (2)

I punched out and shattered the camera.

Shards scattered.

As I had anticipated, the cameraman had no human head above his neck—his head had been replaced by a camera.

The headless cameraman staggered and then fell with a thud.

Another cameraman charged at me.

I raised both hands.

Clapping them together as if catching a mosquito, I struck the camera.

The sound of metal tearing. The camera, caught between my palms, shattered and exploded.

Now, it was the director’s turn.

“Stop!”

The director yelled.

But only an idiot stops when their enemy tells them to.

I advanced on him, ready to kill.

Another cameraman, inexplicably holding a TV, blocked my path.

Seeing the broadcast on the TV screen, I stopped like an idiot.

“Na, Nancy…?”

It was indeed Nancy on the screen.

The background was a dark forest.

Nancy was bound hand and foot, clearly kidnapped.

My heart seemed to freeze.

The director smirked with a pig-like face.

“Why such a serious face? It’s just Nancy left in a forest where ‘The Legendary Deer’ is said to appear. You can see her through the cameraman on-site.”

“You son of a b*tch, what have you done!”

“Don’t use such harsh words. It makes you look weak.”

“……”

“The cameraman with Nancy is under my control. If you harm me, he will do the same to Nancy.”

Then I understood.

The director had been intentionally approaching me since the pharmacy.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t know his motive, but I had to play along.

I couldn’t just stand there, watching Nancy sob on the TV screen.

“What do you want?”

“Take the role.”

The director’s request was simple.

“Become the hunter who has been pursuing ‘The Legendary Deer’ for ten years.”

I clenched my fist.

I missed the narrator, who had seemed unhelpful but had actually provided hints.

The current situation was beyond my guess.

I didn’t know what the director was up to, who the cameramen really were, or even what ‘The Legendary Deer’ was.

The director ordered me to follow him.

It seemed he planned to shoot outside.

But before leaving the house, he made a strange request.

“Before you leave the house, you must share a farewell kiss with your wife.”

“A kiss?”

“It’s an important scene that will open the documentary.”

I gritted my teeth.

It was a nonsensical instruction, but I had no choice.

Thinking of Nancy trembling with fear in the forest, I faced Ellen.

“Ellen… I’m sorry……”

“We have to do this to save Nancy. Come here.”

My first kiss being with a beautiful widow (a friend’s mother) didn’t bother me, but thinking from Ellen’s perspective, it must have been difficult.

Kissing a brutish man like me would be unpleasant.

Ellen approached.

Up close, the height difference was starkly apparent.

Ellen stood on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around my neck, and pulled me close.

Then our lips met, overlapping like petals.

But then something soft touched.

It was Ellen’s tongue.

Startled, I opened my mouth, and her smooth, slippery tongue slid deep inside.

“Chewp… Chup… Churrup…”

Ellen’s arms, wrapped around my neck, tensed.

Her thick tongue rhythmically moved, stirring the heat in my mouth.

It was so intensely sticky and passionate that my legs felt weak.

As we separated, saliva stretched between us.

The cameramen didn’t miss capturing this scene.

Ellen’s face turned red.

She trembled slightly, whether from embarrassment or something else.

“…Keep this a secret from Nancy.”

Ellen whispered.

To save her daughter by forcibly kissing someone like me.

Truly, a mother is great.

I was deeply moved inside.

“Alright, let’s head outside now.”

Led by the director, I stepped outside.

Upon opening the front door, an absurd sight unfolded.

Easily over a hundred cameramen were standing in the yard.

—
Raei  Translations
—

“…The Legendary Deer.”

I tilted my beer glass and wet my throat.

The bitter alcohol burned down my esophagus.

“That bastard took everything from me…!”

I spat out such nonsensical lines.

This place was a bar.

Three cameramen were watching me through their lenses.

The bar owner and other patrons looked at me as if I were insane.

I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t bear it.

I clenched my fist, and the beer glass shattered into pieces.

The director, who had been watching from behind, chimed in.

“You’d better act properly, Summer. In that forest where Nancy Strode is shivering and waiting, bears often appear.”

“Haah…”

“We need to finish shooting before Nancy gets torn apart by a bear alive, don’t we?”

It was a threat using Nancy as leverage.

The shooting took place at various locations.

I played the role of ‘the tracker who has been searching for The Legendary Deer for a whole ten years.’

Wherever the director went soon became a set.

I had to change my clothes several times as the shooting progressed.

I eventually learned roughly about ‘The Legendary Deer.’

The story goes like this:

A hunter in the forest caught a deer, and strangely, this deer did not die even after its head was cut off.

The headless torso was said to have moved on its own.

The hunter stuffed the deer’s head and hung it on the wall as a trophy, leaving the body to lie.

Over time, the headless body began to rot.

There was no choice but to dispose of it with the head.

Just as the hunter decided this and raised his knife, the deer’s body kicked out.

The blade sliced the hunter’s throat.

The deer had its revenge.

It was a story one might find in the diary of a drug addict.

But there’s still a twist left.

The beheaded deer that successfully killed the hunter was still not dead.

It is said that this deer still roams the forest.

It became known as ‘The Legendary Deer.’

The tracker (me) is a persistent man who has been searching for this legendary deer for ten years.

The director claimed to vividly capture his desperate saga on camera.

“Excuse me.”

This time, the filming location was on the streets. I approached a young woman, obviously under the director’s orders.

She seemed about Nancy’s age, perhaps a college student on her way to meet her boyfriend.

She was startled when she saw me.

“Hee, heek!”

“Do you happen to know?”

“I don’t know…!!”

She seemed frightened by my menacing appearance.

Or perhaps, she was terrified by the bizarre brigade of cameramen lined up behind me.

“I haven’t even mentioned it yet, and you don’t know what?”

“Please… please save me…!! I’ll give you money!!!”

“I don’t need your money, just calm down.”

I asked her if she knew about ‘The Legendary Deer.’

The woman cautiously nodded.

“Oh, I heard about that story today from a professor…”

“That deer is still roaming the forest. I have been chasing it for ten years.”

“Why are you chasing it?”

“Well…”

I glanced at the director.

Even the tracker hadn’t heard why he was chasing The Legendary Deer.

The director off-camera quickly scribbled something on a sketchbook.

The line I was supposed to deliver was written there.

[To catch The Legendary Deer and avenge the hunter]

I relayed that to the college student.

“Avenge the hunter…? Why take revenge? He died because of his own fault…”

The college student said that.

Hearing that, it made sense.

There was no reason to seek vengeance for the hunter.

He had merely met a pathetic death due to his own foolish actions.

It was a death deserving of mockery.

But then, suddenly, the director shouted.

“Cut!”

He walked towards us.

Without any preamble, he tried to slap the college student.

I caught the director’s hand in mid-air just as it was about to make contact with the college student’s cheek.

I twisted one of his fingers while wearing a glove.

Crunch—However, it was strange.

It didn’t feel like breaking a human bone.

It felt more like snapping asparagus wrapped in foil.

Even though the finger bent 120 degrees back towards his hand, the director remained expressionless.

Was that really a finger under the glove?

“Breaking my finger? Are you out of your mind?”

“Just correcting your bad manners,” I replied.

“I suppose Nancy Strode needs some correcting too. I’ll order them to cut off her fingers immediately.”

I grabbed the director by the scruff of his neck and lifted him up.

“The moment you touch even one of Nancy’s fingers, I’ll pull out your intestines and strangle you with them.”

“Oh…”

“Be satisfied with my participation in your sh*tty production.”

I felt something odd through the fist that was gripping his scruff.

Despite the director’s bulky body, it was hard.

He wasn’t human after all. Neither were the cameramen.

What exactly are they?

Narrator, if you’re watching, give me the answer…

The filming continued.

We randomly stopped pedestrians on the streets or barged into restaurants to conduct impromptu interviews.

People shivered and complied with the interviews, seemingly pressured by my killer-like appearance and the grotesque troupe of cameramen.

Most of the locals were aware of ‘The Legendary Deer.’

It was a celebrity of the region, like Yeti or Bigfoot.

As the filming went on, I gained a deeper understanding of the character of the tracker I was portraying.

He had spent the last 10 years furiously upending the forest and gathering every piece of information, including eyewitness accounts, in search of ‘The Legendary Deer.’

Agreeing to participate in the director’s documentary was supposedly a step closer to the truth.

The tracker was driven by madness.

A madness that burned hot like red-hot lava.

He had revered the hunter.

It was admirable.

After all, he had caught and beheaded an entity that he hadn’t even seen the shadow of in 10 years.

The tracker fervently defended the hunter and propagated how vile the deer was.

It seemed like a rationalization for a decade spent chasing shadows.

I wondered why the director had created such a character.

No, it was strange to be filming this kind of thing in the first place.

What the cameramen were capturing was nothing more than a cheap documentary wrapped in a plausible package.

Four hours into the filming.

The night had deepened.

A full moon pregnant with madness looked down upon the crazy world.

Seeing the moonlight leaving faint traces in the darkness, I became worried about Nancy, who had been kidnapped and left in the forest.

The director’s words about bears frequently appearing in that forest haunted my thoughts.

We had to finish this damn filming quickly and save Nancy.

“Let’s go to the theater now,” the director led.

The theater Nancy should have come to today.

Posters for ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Clowns from Outer Space’ were plastered large as doors.

“What are you trying to film here?”

“We’re not filming. We’re going to review the footage we’ve shot so far.”

“Review…?”

“We need to see how it resonates with the audience!”

Accompanied only by three cameramen, the director and I entered the theater.

The director headed for the projection room. He burst through the door.

“What, what the hell? Who are you?!”

The projectionist shouted.

The cameramen swarmed in and tightly tied up the projectionist.

Nancy must have been kidnapped in the same way.

Humming a tune, the director changed the film in the projector.

The film “Clowns from Outer Space” was removed, and the documentary footage we shot today was inserted.

“I’m excited…!”

The director eagerly rubbed his hands together as he peered down at the auditorium through a small window.

The audience, expecting the antics of the delightful killer clowns, was in for a surprise.

Instead of the movie opening, the documentary began to play.

It was infuriating to see the audience’s enjoyment being robbed.

Watching it, I too was angered.

But I wasn’t the only one infuriated.

When a shoddy documentary about ‘The Legendary Deer’ started playing instead of the killer clowns, the disappointed audience booed.

They threw popcorn and even urinated at the screen, causing a major disturbance.

The director’s chubby face contorted.

“Summer. This is the last shoot,” he declared.

He pointed at the audience.

“Kill them all.”

—