Chapter 62: something about us

[You said you wanted to be friends, right? Then can you come out to the hill behind the school right now?]

In the dark room, the phone screen glows pale. After two hours of deliberation, I finally finish writing a single line of text, but my fingers, which I had just raised, are still shaking so badly that it’s pitiful.

The send button, which is so close, feels so far away.

It’s just a matter of closing my eyes and pressing a button, so why am I hesitating so much?

Can you ask the dog to come out to the hill behind the school tonight?

Why?

I just have something to talk about. Well, it’s none of your business.

The conversation I had with that guy with the unpleasant face earlier today comes to mind.

I don’t know the details, but it’s definitely not something good.

I don’t know what kind of grudge that woman has, but she’s quite pretty, and beauty can sometimes be a poison that harms its owner.

Moreover, calling a woman to a dark place at a dark time.

What could she possibly be planning to do? Anyone who isn’t an idiot could guess.

Of course, even if that’s the case, it’s none of my business.

Whether that girl gets into trouble there, has her clothes torn off by dirty men, gets raped, or ends up pregnant with an unwanted child, it has nothing to do with me, who is comfortably resting at home.

It’s a bit disgusting, but that’s just how humans are, right? They’re a bunch of people whose empathy drops rapidly when it comes to things that might harm themselves.

I’m just a little weaker than average, and that’s just how society is.

Yeah, it’s none of my business.

In fact, considering the warning that man casually gave me, it’s best to just do what he asked and then forget about it.

If I fail to bring that woman out, it’s all too obvious where the arrows of misplaced malice will fly.

Even if it’s just a whim, I want to continue living a peaceful life within the school.

As I made up my mind and was about to send the text, another memory spread through my mind like fog. The faint echo of a girl’s voice.

If I bothered you, I’m sorry. I just wanted to be friends. The truth is, I don’t have any friends either.

Belief in Santa Claus has long since collapsed, and even preschoolers walk around with vulgar words on their lips like gangsters.

The face of a woman who uttered lines that wouldn’t even be used in a third-rate drama with an innocent expression comes to mind.

The faint blush on her cheeks, the youthful vitality emanating from her pale pink lips—everything about her was so different from me.

She was so pure, both inside and out.

“…I can’t.”

The trembling finally subsides, but my fingers slip off the phone screen.

At this point, I have no choice but to admit it. I like that woman, I’ve come to like her.

I don’t know yet whether this is what people call “like” or “love,” but I was captivated by her words, saying she wanted to be friends with someone like me.

Friend, that awkward word. The first awkward existence I’ve ever known in my life.

I can’t help but smile at the sound that doesn’t fit with me. Even though it’s a discordant sound, it’s strangely appealing.

But even now, a rational part of my mind refuses to stop doubting.

She’ll just deceive you like everyone else. She’ll suck you dry, and when she’s done with you, she’ll throw you away. Who in this world would ever truly like you?

The familiar self-denial.

But now, I’ve come to like her so much that such doubts no longer matter. I finally realize the truth that I have been denying all this time.

No matter what, we are friends.

As friends, it is only natural to help each other… We are friends, right?

Reciting a line from a comic book makes me feel like I am the protagonist.

My heart flutters, but it’s not a bad feeling.

I delete the text I was writing without hesitation and open the door to leave.

Even if I don’t send the text, if I just stay put, the same thing will happen anyway.

I have to do something. With that in mind, I head to the school’s back mountain as promised, with only my cheap cell phone as my preparation.

If my vague prediction is correct, the other person is a promising criminal.

Having been born and raised as a loser, fear still lingers within me, but if I think about it differently, they’re just a bunch of delinquents eating school lunches.

If I warn them that I’ll call the police the moment they do anything, they’ll back off on their own.

In this day and age, where reporting systems are widespread, there’s no way someone like Eom Seok-dae would appear.

It was late at night, so there were few people on the streets.

I passed through a gloomy alleyway with a slightly different atmosphere than usual and arrived at a hill that resembled the hunched back of an ugly old woman.

I flashed my phone’s flashlight and looked around.

“Hey! Here it is!”

“You idiot, don’t make any noise!”

Since the mountain was nothing more than a large hill, the people waiting there were easy to spot.

Three sturdy men huddled together.

The unlucky guy with glasses, who had been subtly intimidating me, noticed me first and greeted me.

Another man spoke in a loud voice, mocking the guy with glasses.

Who are the guys next to him? They look pretty rough, blowing into soju bottles, but I don’t remember seeing them at school.

Are they high school students? I raise my guard and turn on my phone, pre-entering the number 112.

I don’t trust the police at all, but it’s just for defense.

“What? Where’s the old lady? Did you come alone?”

“Um, well… why are you calling me?”

I had come here with a firm resolve, but the slight unpleasantness in his tone made my heart flutter again.

I swallowed the saliva gathering in my mouth and tried to appear as composed as possible.

Despite that, I couldn’t help but tremble slightly, but I straightened my chest as much as I could.

“Hey, you’ll end up in trouble if you keep this up. Do you think I’ll go easy on you just because you’re a girl? Call that b*tch Isia right now before I throw a punch.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“Hah, look at you. At least you’re a good friend, right?”

“Don’t come any closer. I’ll call the police!”

Ignoring my desperate cries, he spat phlegm at me.

I tried to step back, but my body, frozen in fear, wouldn’t move.

The men approached steadily, ignoring my growing panic.

When I came to my senses, I was surrounded.

Why are these guys acting so recklessly? The option to resolve this through conversation vanished in an instant.

Surrounded by three burly men, my body instinctively shrinks back.

I had already braced myself for a few blows, but…

“Hey, Choi Jae-soo, you said you could sleep with that girl today. So I came here full of expectations, but all I find is this pathetic girl. What the hell is this?”

“I’m sorry, sir…”

“Fine. I was an idiot for expecting anything from a guy like you in the first place.”

“Hey, what about the girl? We can’t just send her away like this.”

“What else can we do? Choi Jae-soo, turn on the camera over there. Record it.”

“What are you doing!”

Before she could press the call button, the phone was snatched away in an instant.

She reached out quickly, but at that moment, a pain like being stabbed with a knife

welled up from below.

As she instinctively bent over, she saw the man’s fist hitting her right in the middle of her chest. Stomach acid rose up.

“Ugh!”

“Don’t resist. My brother isn’t a rough guy. He’s a pure-hearted man who doesn’t hit women unless he has to. But a b*tch like you needs to be taught a lesson!”

As I clutched my stomach and crouched down, my clothes were roughly torn off.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a camera flash shining brightly nearby.

“You crazy glasses-wearing bastard… How dare you…!”

“That’s why I’m recording it with the camera. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on taking advantage of you. But if you so much as open your mouth, I’ll post it on Instagram right away. Do you understand?”

He tried to push away the hands reaching for him, but his shoulders had already lost their strength, and his resistance was feeble.

As his school uniform, shirt, and skirt fell off, leaving him in a state of embarrassment too humiliating to describe, the man who had been undressing him suddenly stopped.

“What the hell? Why did you stop all of a sudden?”

“Shit… I’m hard.”

“You’re crazy.”

The man hurriedly unbuttoned his pants. Immediately, his thickly bulging briefs were exposed, and he pulled them down.

“You crazy bastard, are you a chimpanzee?”

“Shit…

If I don’t like it, I’ll just watch.” What am I supposed to do? I’m horny. If you don’t like it, just watch.”

The object symbolizing masculinity exposed in the cold night air. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it.

In fact, if you count the number of times, it’s quite a lot.

Although I’ve only seen one person’s, so this is the first time I’ve seen someone else’s, but anyway, they’re all the same.

The unpleasant appearance, the foul sweat.

Even though I have a lot of experience, it doesn’t make me a pervert, so the unpleasant situation doesn’t change, but familiarity outweighs it.

So I wasn’t shocked. No, even as my body jolted like sitting in the back of a bus, I was actually feeling joy. Excited?

No way.

If I weren’t here now, it would probably be Isia, or rather, Sia, who would be going through this.

Even if I go through this, it’s only a pile of filth with a handful of filth stuck to it, but that pure child is different.

I don’t feel sadness or fear about my own situation, but when I imagine her going through this, it feels utterly horrible.

So instead of feeling pain, I feel happiness. The fact that I, a worthless person, sacrificed myself for her, for my first friend in life, is enough to give me a great sense of satisfaction.

After all, my body was already filthy to begin with. It doesn’t matter how many times I give it away. My body may be that of a prostitute, but my heart is that of a saint.

“Oh, she looks pretty good without her glasses.”

“Really?… It’s true. Should I try it too?”

Resisting is pointless; you’ll just get hit.

I hate getting hit. I hate being raped, but I hate getting hit even more. Pain never becomes familiar.

I hate receiving it, and I hate giving it.

I relax the tension in my stiff body. This way, I won’t get hit. How do I know? Because my father did it.

Whenever I rebelled even slightly as a child, he would raise his fist with a stern expression.

It was like sailing a sailboat through a raging storm.

The safest method was to quietly lower the sails and conform to the wind.

It was how the prey, not the predator, adapted to the wild.

The weeds tickling my back, the low-grade fever enveloping my body—these things became familiar over time.

I stopped thinking and adapted to the man’s rough movements.

“This girl is quite useful. It’s surprising that she’s not a virgin, given how she looks.”

“I admit it… Later, I’ll f*ck that b*tch Isia like this too.”

But the moment I heard those words, my mind went blank. Sia is off-limits. Unlike me, Sia is not the kind of girl who can handle this kind of thing.

Driven by an unknown sense of urgency, my shoulders, which had been trembling up and down, moved on their own.

The next moment, my hand picked up the soju bottle rolling around by my head and struck the man’s temple with all my strength.

It happened before I could even think. The guy, who had been sitting on my stomach and wriggling his hips, fell sideways.

I hit him hard, and the back of his head was deeply indented, like the cleavage of a voluptuous woman.

Perhaps because it happened so quickly, there was no scream.

The shallow forest remained shrouded in silence, and only the bloodstains on my hands asserted their presence with a pungent odor.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Ah, ah…”

I had killed a person. None other than myself, with these very hands.

My hands trembled as if I had overdosed on aspirin.

My pale white hands were stained red. In the soft moonlight,

the red blood stood out.

What had I done? Whatever it was, it was undeniably irreversible. What the hell had I done?

I clutched my head tightly with both hands.

Sticky blood clung to my hair, and my vision blurred.

Dizziness accompanied by nausea and a sense of disgust, the smell of blood driving a wedge into my half-broken sanity, and… what was this strange sense of exhilaration?

Huh?

As if I had fainted, everything went dark before my eyes, and when I opened them again, I was sitting with the unlucky glasses-wearing man under my butt. Is this

what they call riding on top? When I lowered my head, I saw the glasses-wearing man trembling like a delicate girl, holding his cracked glasses.

The expression on his face was consumed by primal fear.

I remember killing one of them, but what about the other? I glanced over and saw the first one I killed lying next to him, his face half torn off.

What the hell is that? Who did that? I wiped the blood off my cheek with the back of my hand, as if applying makeup.

“What the hell is this?”

“Hee, heeek…!”

When I asked that, my reflection flashed across his contracted pupils.

My blood-stained figure. My dilated pupils. The warm fabric of blood covering my white naked body.

It looked like I had put on beautiful makeup, and I felt strangely happy. The orange chainsaw in my right hand

roars in response. Where the hell did this come from?

I’m not caught up in self-indulgence. But this is the first time I’ve felt this way.

I’ve often looked at others with fear in my eyes, but this is the first time I’ve looked at myself that way.

It was as if the victim who had always been preyed upon had become the predator. In the end, I was just as evil as the others, but I never knew that despising the weak could feel so good.

My chest swelled with self-esteem like a sparrow.

“Please, spare me… I didn’t do anything…”

As he pleaded, a warm liquid spread around his lower body. Under normal circumstances, I would have been disgusted, but

thinking of it as a physiological reaction caused by fear of me, it wasn’t so bad.

Hmm, not bad. I stick out my tongue and lick his protruding Adam’s apple.

The sticky sweat on my tongue, the man’s stiff body twitching as if struck by electricity.

“Do you want to live?”

I run my tongue over his rough lips, and as soon as I finish speaking, he nods vigorously.

At that moment, the last remnants of my sanity scream in desperation.

As I ask, gently caressing his rough lips with the tip of my tongue, he nods his head as soon as I finish speaking.

At that moment, the last remnants of my sanity scream in desperation.

This is wrong. I have to stop now. This is a bad thing to do. This is something I shouldn’t be doing.

At that cry, his wandering mind returned, and he saw the boy’s eyes, still trembling with fear.

Only then did he fully realize his own appearance.

Not makeup, but filth. A mess of red blood, white brain matter, and cloudy white fluid mixed together.

What was there was not a beautifully dressed bride, but a simple madwoman. Then when did she

go mad?

More importantly, who committed this terrible act? It wasn’t me, at least I don’t think so, anyway, it wasn’t me.

Blood drips from the saw blade, staining my hands and dripping onto the floor. The judge in black robes banging the gavel. No,

don’t look, go back. Even if she’s a criminal, is it so wrong to want to reduce her sentence as much as possible?

Stop being ridiculous, Kang Sun-ah.

Denial of reality has its limits. Send this girl, who is acting like a goat in heat, away now, and go to the police station to turn yourself in.

Murder is a crime, and crime is bad. Yeah, that’s the right path. Murder is a crime, and crime is bad. Yes, that’s the right path.

Your father is a great police officer, isn’t he? He’s a remarkable man who rose from the bottom to become chief of police, isn’t he? Yes, that b*tch, that b*tch ruined my life.

Because of that b*tch, I developed a perverted sexual desire that makes me feel pleasure when I strangle someone.

I don’t want to make excuses. A victim who becomes a perpetrator? That’s ridiculous. I just want to say this. Why is it wrong for a person to kill another person?

I don’t want to make excuses. A victim who becomes a perpetrator? That’s ridiculous. I just want to say this.

Why is it wrong for a person to kill another person?

I’m not trying to make excuses. A victim who becomes a perpetrator? That’s ridiculous.

I just want to say this. Why is it wrong for a person to kill another person? In this world, even if you hit a child who suddenly jumps out in front of your car while driving, you’re treated like a murderer. Just living,

at least once, isn’t that how everyone feels? Or maybe not.

“I’m sorry… You can go now.”

But no matter what, this is wrong.

A sliver of reason cries out desperately. If I go any further, there’s no turning back. Even if he

runs away and goes straight to the police station, that’s fine. I’d rather send him away and then kill myself.

At least before I die, I can be of help to someone important

to me, right? So I have no regrets.

After a long pause, I quietly stepped back from the boy’s stomach, and he cautiously backed away, glancing at me.

Suddenly, the face of my father, whom I had seen long ago, overlapped with the boy’s face.

Seon-ah, today is a safe day, right? Oh, Father, I haven’t even had my first period yet.

They didn’t resemble each other at all—my father was fat and this guy was skinny, my father had a beard and this guy was bald—but

anyway, I was annoyed for no reason, so

I shouted, “Kurt Cobain!”

“Kuh-huh.”

I thrust the electric saw, which was spinning noisily, into the tip, and the glasses-wearing man collapsed helplessly like a puppet with its strings cut.

Suddenly feeling playful, I spun the handle around. Like spinning an arcade stick.

The face’s skin was torn to shreds, and blood gushed out like a cracked jar.

Why am I doing this here? In my hazy mind, the only thing that is clear is the feeling of elation, as if I were flying up into the sky.

Now, even the words “I’m sorry” don’t come to mind. Have I gone too far? Beyond the glowing horizon at dusk, I see a Boeing

747. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you have had a pleasant and enjoyable flight.

“Huh…”

I salivated.

After burying all the creatures whose killers I didn’t know in the ground and returning home, I found my father looking at the moon in the garden.

The words, “Why are you out here at dawn for no reason?” rose to my lips, but I said nothing and just stared at him.

Suddenly, he opened his mouth. His thick chin jiggled like a wave.

“You’ve gotten prettier.”

I had wiped off the blood that was caked all over my body, but my face was still covered in it. Because the sticky feeling on my face felt good.

If I had to make a comparison, it was like a human Chupa Chups.

But to say such a thing after seeing his daughter in that state was pathetic.

That night, my father raped me three times.