Min-a's Tears (1)
Dohyung's hands trembled violently as he handed the video player to Min-a. The footage contained a meticulous record of the torment he had inflicted on his four primary targets. It was a grotesque compilation of horrors that would make any ordinary person turn away in disgust: brutal beatings, forced body piercings, flesh branded with white-hot irons to leave permanent scars, borderline-rape sexual abuse, and humiliating races run with dildos forced inside them. On top of that, the video also captured the agonizing suffering of the four bullies he had recently captured for Min-a's revenge, showing them pinned to the walls of his basement.
Dohyung had no idea how Min-a would react. Would she look at him with utter revulsion, screaming at him for how he could commit such subhuman atrocities? Or would she laugh in triumph, finding catharsis in the suffering of Eunji and the four Hanjin High School bullies who had made her own life a living hell?
He knew he could easily find the answer by reading her mind, but he refused to use his magic on Min-a. The very thought of it terrified him. Reading the minds of his captives in the basement was as natural to him as breathing, yet he felt a deep, visceral resistance to doing it to her. He knew exactly why.
"I'm terrified of finding out... what she really thinks of me."
Humans crave the truth, but there are times when they would rather turn a blind eye to it. Dohyung did not want to read her mind only to find disgust or terror directed at him. He would rather walk away forever, ignorant of her true feelings, than face that reality.
Having handed over the player, Dohyung hung his head and waited for her to speak. But as the silence stretched on, his anxiety clawed at his chest. She wasn't screaming in anger; she wasn't laughing in satisfaction. There was no sound from her at all. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, he slowly, tremblingly raised his head.
"Ah...!"
He gasped. Min-a was staring at him, her eyes pooling with profound sorrow. The sheer grief on her face was so far from anything Dohyung had anticipated that it stole the breath from his lungs. He couldn't understand it. Why was she looking at him with such sadness?
"M-Min-a? What's wrong?"
At his voice, Min-a gently wiped away the tears that had begun to spill over her lashes. She handed the video player back to him.
"So... you've been carrying out your revenge just like in this video?"
"...Yes," Dohyung replied, his voice barely a whisper as he nodded weakly.
"But why... why are you looking at me like that?" he asked, desperate to understand her reaction.
"Because it's so... heartbreaking... Watching this video just made me so incredibly sad..."
Dohyung still couldn't grasp what she meant. He hung on her next words, silently begging her to explain why she felt sad.
"To think of what you must have gone through... to change like this... It's just so... *sob*..." Her voice cracked, and she could no longer hold back the flood of tears. They streamed down her cheeks, dripping onto the table below as she buried her face in her hands.
When Dohyung had first mentioned his revenge, she had been privately shocked. The Kim Dohyung she remembered was simply not the kind of person capable of such cruelty. Back in high school, he wasn't a student who stood out in any particular way. To her, he had initially been nothing more than just another boy in her class.
But then came a certain day in the hallway. She had been walking quickly, preoccupied with some urgent errand, when she noticed Lee Jia—who always hung around Han Eunji's crowd—approaching from the opposite direction. Min-a had intended to simply walk past her, but in an instant, someone suddenly stepped in front of her.
"Ah!"
Beyond the person who had suddenly stepped in, she heard Jia let out a sharp, startled shriek.
"Oh, are you okay? I'm so sorry."
"Ugh, seriously! Why the fuck did you just pop out of nowhere, you piece of shit!"
Jia threw a hysterical tantrum at the boy who had bumped into her, huffing in annoyance before storming off.
"Phew... That was close. Are you okay?"
Watching Jia walk away, the boy let out a sigh of relief and turned to ask Min-a if she was unharmed.
"Uh... yeah, I'm fine."
"Really? That's a relief. I don't know why, but it looked like she was trying to pick a fight with you. Getting tangled up with her... well, it can get pretty annoying, you know?"
"Ah, yeah... Thank you..."
With that, the boy—Dohyung—turned and went on his way.
That was the moment Dohyung truly registered in Min-a's mind. It might have seemed like a trivial incident, but back then, Jia was surrounded by nasty rumors of being a delinquent. Getting involved with her could have ruined Min-a's school life, so she felt deeply grateful that Dohyung had stepped in to shield her. After that, she found herself noticing him more and more. He was a quiet student, silently taking on the chores and tasks that others avoided. To anyone else, he was a mere extra in the background of a larger story, but for some reason, Min-a's eyes kept drifting toward him. She often thought about approaching him to strike up a conversation, but shyness always held her back. Instead, she contented herself with stealing glances at him from afar, finding a strange, quiet comfort in his presence.
But that peaceful happiness didn't last. Ever since he had collided with Jia in her stead, Dohyung began disappearing more frequently during recesses. Then, one day, Jia marched into their classroom during a break and hurled a milk carton straight at Dohyung's face as he sat at his desk.
"Ugh!"
Dohyung, who had been quietly reading a book, was caught completely off guard by the flying carton and knocked sideways.
"Hey! I told you to get strawberry milk! Why the fuck did you buy banana milk, you idiot?!"
Jia's screeching voice echoed through the classroom. Yet, not a single soul dared to say a word to her. After all, Jia, alongside Eunji, was currently stepping on a boy's back, shouting at him.
"Urgh..."
"Can't you do a single damn thing right? You useless, pathetic retard."
Pinned under Jia's foot, Dohyung lay motionless on the floor. He could have easily stood up if he wanted to, but the fear of the inevitable backlash kept him pinned down.
It was then that the horrible truth dawned on Min-a. Dohyung was being ruthlessly bullied by Jia. The moment she realized he was being summoned every single recess to run grueling errands, treated like a literal slave, tears welled in her eyes. No one else knew, but Min-a understood exactly why Dohyung had become Jia's target. It was because of that day he had stepped in to shield her, taking the brunt of Jia's wrath so Min-a wouldn't have to.
Once that realization took hold, she could no longer stand by and watch him suffer. Her heart ached to see him humiliated in front of the entire class while everyone else looked away. She resolved to return the favor, to extend the same helping hand he had offered her. And so, the next time the bullies targeted him, she had stepped in directly.
When she stood up to shield Dohyung, Jia surprisingly seemed to back off. Min-a had genuinely believed her intervention had put an end to the abuse. She tried to approach Dohyung to talk to him more, but he actively avoided her. In reality, the bullies had only stopped tormenting him in the classroom to avoid Min-a's persistent interference; instead, they simply dragged him to secluded corners where no one could see. Furthermore, Dohyung had actively pushed Min-a away out of fear that being near him would make her their next target.
Still under the illusion that she had saved him, Min-a faced a dilemma when the opportunity arose to transfer to Hanjin High School. She agonized over whether to leave or stay. Ultimately, persuaded by her parents, she chose to transfer. She had wanted to stay in touch with Dohyung, but they had never even exchanged phone numbers before she left. At her new school, she found herself subjected to the same brutal bullying that Dohyung had endured. When she later heard the news that Dohyung had gone missing and vanished entirely, she had wept bitterly in secret.
And now, the boy who had returned to her completely unscathed was confessing that he had used magic to kidnap their former tormentors, subjecting them to a life of endless, agonizing torture. The Dohyung in her memories was someone who helped others, not someone who took pleasure in inflicting pain. To realize that the person committing the unspeakable atrocities in that video—all in the name of revenge—was the very same Dohyung she knew... it broke her heart.
They say a person's core nature doesn't change easily. She couldn't begin to fathom the sheer extremity of the horrors he must have faced to be driven to this point. When she thought of Eunji—who had bullied her just as ruthlessly—and imagined the hell Dohyung must have endured after she transferred, she was overwhelmed. The thought of the unimaginable suffering Dohyung had gone through triggered a wave of profound sorrow she couldn't suppress, spilling over as a torrent of tears.
Min-a could guess why Dohyung had approached her and confessed all of this through the video. Judging by his demeanor, he wasn't showing her his vengeance against Eunji and the four Hanjin High bullies to brag or show off. On the contrary, it felt like a painful confession he desperately wanted to hide but forced himself to make.
"If he wanted to hide it, he easily could have. With his magic, he could have kept this a secret until the day he died."
Yet, Dohyung had laid bare his darkest, most shameful secrets to her. To Min-a, this felt like a silent, desperate plea for help. A plea to save him from himself—from the madness of his vendetta, from the bottomless swamp of revenge he had drowned in. Min-a possessed no special powers, but if Dohyung was reaching out for a lifeline, she was more than willing to take his hand.