The Truth at the Door
“Father⋯.”
Lee Si-hyun stumbled backward on trembling legs.
“S-Sihyun! No, that’s not it. You’ve got it wrong. It’s not what you think it is.”
Lee Dong-seop hastily waved his blood-smeared hands and tried to defend himself.
“Got it wrong? You expect me to believe this scene in front of me is a misunderstanding?”
“Yes! This woman suddenly collapsed. She wasn’t breathing, so I was going to give her mouth-to-mouth⋯.”
“While you were pantsless and covered in blood? And what exactly is that blood around your mouth, Father?”
“Th-this⋯ it’s a nosebleed! I hit my nose when I fell, that’s all!”
“Don’t lie to me! That woman has marks around her throat. She’s covered in bruises all over!”
Lee Dong-seop’s pupils shook wildly.
Forcing up the corners of his twisted mouth, he managed a strained smile.
“No, listen to your father. I’m your dad, aren’t I? How could I ever—after all I’ve done for you—would you really doubt your one and only father?”
“Don’t come any closer!”
Lee Si-hyun’s voice split sharply through the air.
She could not bear to listen to any more of his nauseating pleas of family love in the face of the corpse sprawled cold and still on the floor, in the face of this unmistakable atrocity.
“Sihyun, please. If you call the police here, your father’s life is over. Huh? Just this once, pretend you didn’t see anything and let it go⋯.”
“Your life? What about the life of this dead woman?!”
“She’s already dead, damn it! The living have to keep living! I’m your father! Your father!!”
“And you still call yourself my father after seeing that?”
Deep disgust and revulsion surged in Lee Si-hyun’s eyes.
“Father⋯ no, you⋯ are disgusting. Worse than a beast.”
“Sihyun!! You can’t talk to your father like that!”
Her gaze cooled even further.
Lee Dong-seop took a step toward her, reaching out with hands that dripped blood.
When his clumsy excuses failed, the submissive look in his eyes flickered with something else—something ugly.
“How can you do this to me! I devoted my whole life to you!”
“Don’t talk bullshit! I said don’t come any closer!”
With Lee Si-hyun’s shriek, a violent wave of mana detonated in every direction.
Crash!
Lee Dong-seop was sent sprawling backward, rolling in the dirt in a pitiful heap.
Lee Si-hyun looked down at the obscene nakedness of his lower body as he thrashed in the soil, her expression so cold it made her teeth ache.
“How⋯ how could you⋯ do something this horrible.”
“Kkh⋯ Sihyun. If you just help me clean up the body⋯”
“You’re crazy. You’re really crazy.”
Her mind burned white-hot.
The filthy true face of a man she had believed to be family all her life now stood exposed before her.
She was torn apart by a vicious confusion—whether to call the police, or whether, as an Awaker herself, she should subdue the beast on the spot.
That was when it happened.
“A pitiful life, yours.”
A dry male voice suddenly fell from empty air.
Lee Si-hyun jolted hard, and Lee Dong-seop, crawling across the floor, spun in panic, glaring all around him.
“W-Who is it?! Who’s there!”
At his frantic scream, a cold reply came flying back.
“The grim reaper who came to take out the trash.”
Han Suhyuk swung the Judge side without hesitation.
He had no intention, not for a moment, of ending things in one clean stroke.
Slash—!
“Huh—? AAAAAAAH!”
The curved blade of the side sliced straight through Lee Dong-seop’s grotesque center and thigh.
But the physical agony of the blood spraying skyward was only the beginning.
The instant the blade made contact, a horrifying pain tore through his soul, ripping it to shreds.
A punishment that burned away his remaining lifespan while locking him in permanent torment.
Lee Dong-seop rolled his eyes white, clawed at the ground, and convulsed like an animal.
“Kh⋯ kuhk⋯ AAAAAARGH! My c-cock!! My leg!! Aaaaghhh!”
Lee Si-hyun, staring directly at the brutal judgment unfolding before her, could hardly breathe.
An unseen presence.
A merciless trajectory that sliced through flesh in a single stroke.
She knew at once.
The unknown reaper who had harvested the necks of party members inside the Gate just one day earlier was here now.
Instinct screamed at her to run, but her legs, crushed beneath overwhelming fear, would not move even an inch.
Han Suhyuk looked down coldly at Lee Dong-seop, who was vomiting blood onto the floor and writhing as though he might die any second.
- Serial murder
- Habitual rape
- Sexual assault
- Kidnapping
- Illegal confinement
- Corpse mutilation
- Abandonment of a body
- Aggravated assault
The collection of the most nauseating crimes a human being could commit.
Han Suhyuk’s expression sank into glacial cold.
“The bastard you call your father is nothing but a lump of sin.”
Lee Si-hyun collapsed to the ground, shaking violently at the chilling voice coming from the air.
An invisible figure.
And yet the suffocating presence of death she had felt inside the Gate yesterday was tightening around her throat all over again.
She lifted her head toward the direction of the voice and spoke in a terrified, stumbling whisper.
“A-Are you here to kill me?”
She thought he had chased her all the way here to finish what he had not been able to do inside the Gate yesterday.
But Han Suhyuk’s answer cut through her assumption.
“No.”
The dry voice split the air.
“I came to clean up some filthy trash. You just happened to be standing there. You’re irrelevant.”
“⋯What? Trash?”
Lee Si-hyun’s wavering gaze turned to the man on the floor—her father, or rather the man who had been her father—vomiting blood and panting like a beast.
Han Suhyuk quietly looked down at her.
It had been a long time since he’d spoken to anyone like this while wearing the Judge’s robe.
But he had no intention of chatting familiarly with her and spilling every last detail.
A brief silence fell.
Han Suhyuk threw a cold glance at Lee Dong-seop, who was flailing in a pool of blood with his lower body severed off.
Simple flesh-shearing punishment alone was nowhere near enough to repay the crimes of that vicious serial killer.
Han Suhyuk murmured inwardly, Retribution of Karma.
“Aaaagh!!”
A scream that seemed to tear his throat apart burst from Lee Dong-seop’s mouth.
His eyes rolled back as he began flinging his arms wildly at the empty air.
“D-Don’t come near me! Stay back! I’m sorry! I was wrong! Aaaah! I said stay away!! P-please!”
It wasn’t the physical pain that mattered.
The countless vengeful spirits he had cruelly trampled and extinguished were now taking shape as hallucinations, tearing at his entire body.
The most horrifying terror of all shredded Lee Dong-seop’s mind to pieces.
Just as Han Suhyuk was about to turn away from the trash bawling and thrashing inside the illusion of hell—
“Please⋯ spare that man.”
Lee Si-hyun spoke up, gathering every scrap of courage she had.
But her voice trembled violently.
“I’ll turn him over to the police. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison, and I’ll make sure he never sees the light of day again. So please⋯ don’t kill him.”
Still clutching both hands tightly together, she lowered herself to the ground.
He was a filthy beast who had committed murder right before her eyes, yes—but he had also been blood, someone she had called her father for her entire life.
There was disgust and revulsion in her heart, but there was also the contradictory, sickening desire not to watch her own blood die in front of her.
Lee Si-hyun herself hardly knew what she was saying. Fear and confusion had robbed her of proper judgment.
Seeing him convulse in a body slick with blood, her emotions tangled into a knot, and all that came out was a desperate plea to save someone, anyone, on pure instinct.
“Hoo⋯.”
Han Suhyuk let out a short breath as he looked down at the pitiful crown of her head through the robe.
Did this woman know?
Did she know that there were Awakers who could grow stronger by sending sinners burdened with heavy sin to hell?
That to Han Suhyuk, the murderer before him was not a human being, but simply a monster to be cut apart—trash that spat out Hell Points?
Because she didn’t know, she could say such naïve things.
Han Suhyuk answered in a voice stripped of all emotion.
“I sent him somewhere better than prison.”
“⋯What?”
Just then, Lee Si-hyun lifted her stunned face.
“Aaaah!! No! No, no, no!!”
Lee Dong-seop, who had been making his final desperate struggle inside the hallucination, began crumbling like a sheet of paper burned to ash. Before long, he scattered upward into the air as a shower of black glittering dust.
He vanished without leaving a single drop of blood behind.
The same bizarre disappearance Lee Si-hyun had seen inside the Gate yesterday.
“Hell. There’s nowhere better than that for your father to be punished.”
“Ah⋯.”
The moment Han Suhyuk’s chilly verdict ended, the black dust drifting through the air disappeared entirely, like a mirage dissolving in sunlight.
Lee Si-hyun stared blankly at the empty ground where her father had once existed and let out a breath that might have been a sigh or a scream.
She couldn’t have explained it in words, but she knew instinctively that Suhyuk was gone.
Lee Si-hyun remained on the ground for a long time, unable to move a muscle.
Only the cold feel of the dirt seeping up beneath her knees proved, with miserable certainty, that she was still in reality.
How long had passed?
With trembling hands, she pulled out her smartphone.
The screen swam in a blur.
She couldn’t tell whether it was tears or shock.
Her fingers dialed a number on their own.
Two rings.
- Hello?
A voice came through, but it didn’t reach her ears.
Lee Si-hyun only forced out what she had to say.
“Someone⋯ died.”
Then she lowered the phone.
Still kneeling, she looked at the woman’s corpse lying cold on the ground.
It was a face she had never seen before.
She didn’t even know her name.
And yet the smeared mascara at the corners of her eyes said she had been someone loved, in some ordinary way, by someone else.
“I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t killed her.
She hadn’t even been able to stop it.
And still, it felt exactly like her fault.
She clenched her teeth, trying not to break, but a sob slipped out anyway.
Not long after, heavy footsteps drew near.
“Si-hyun!”
A low, firm voice.
Lee Si-hyun lifted her head with difficulty.
A woman appeared with two police officers at her side.
Sharp eyes, short black hair, and a tall, commanding build that drew the eye at once—the master of Beyond Guild, Kang Ha-rin.
“Unni⋯.”