Listen When I'm Asked Nicely
"Then why not just barge right in?"
When her two friends looked at her quizzically, Suyeon scratched her head.
"It's just... going in alone feels a little awkward, you know?"
Suyeon had hesitated by the shared entrance too, watching people come and go, waiting each time the lobby door swung open.
But now that the moment had come to actually walk inside, her feet refused to move.
The memories kept surfacing—borrowing the bathroom, wearing Yeoncheong's clothes, sleeping in the same bed just the two of them—and she found herself blushing belatedly over all of it.
A blessing, though, that Hasol and Nayun were with her now. Even her steps toward Yeoncheong's apartment felt lighter than usual.
Having made up her mind the moment she saw her friends' faces, Suyeon licked her lips and spoke up.
"With you guys here today, it's fine. We'll slip in when someone opens the front door."
"And you were waiting around for that?"
Nayun poked around near the keypad for a moment, then punched in a few numbers.
Somehow, she'd gotten the passcode right, and the door slid open with a soft hiss.
Hasol and Suyeon followed her in, trailing after Nayun's casual stride.
"Wait, what? How'd you know the password?"
"These buildings usually have it written down somewhere out of the way. This one did too, so I tried it and it opened."
Nayun shrugged it off like it was nothing, though her answer drifted slightly away from what her friends had actually been asking.
"And how do *you* know that?"
"My mom's son did delivery work for a bit. Heard it from him back then."
Suyeon rolled the strange turn of phrase around in her mouth a few times before it clicked.
"Oh. Right, your older brother?"
"Suyeon. How many times do I have to say it—there's no such thing in my house."
"Huh? Oh... right."
Faced with her friend's dead-serious expression, Suyeon found herself nodding along before she even realized it.
"Guys, hurry up. Someone might overhear us talking here."
Following Hasol, who was already halfway up the stairs, Suyeon and Nayun muffled their footsteps and headed for the second floor.
Hasol pointed a finger at one of the doors. Suyeon, who'd climbed up behind her, gave a nod and stepped in front of it.
Nayun asked one more time if she was absolutely sure she knew the code.
"I told you, I do. Just watch."
Recalling how carelessly Yeoncheong used to punch in the numbers, Suyeon moved her hand over the keypad.
Her fingers fell into a confident rhythm from memory, and the lock clicked open.
She shot Nayun a sidelong glance and puffed her shoulders up smugly.
Would the door lock itself again? Hasol grabbed the handle and flung it wide open.
Just as they'd expected, Yeoncheong was home. Her startled blue eyes, thrown wide by the sudden opening of the door, wavered wildly as she took in her friends' faces.
"Hasol? And Suyeon and Nayun too?"
"Yeoncheong!"
But the joy of reunion didn't last long.
Because of the kitchen knife in Yeoncheong's hand, its blade flashing cold where the light caught it.
She hadn't even gone to school, holed up at home like this.
A friend whose mind was surely on edge, with a knife in her grip.
The reactions of the three friends that followed were, in a way, only natural.
"Hey!"
"You crazy lunatic!"
"Grab it from her!"
Screams so tangled together it was impossible to tell whose voice was whose rang through the building corridor and Yeoncheong's apartment alike.
All three of them lunged at once.
Yeoncheong, tackled out of nowhere by three people, crashed to the floor with a heavy thud—and her three friends piled right on top of her.
"Hiihk!"
The kitchen knife, launched into the air, came back down right beside her head.
As a thoroughly shaken Yeoncheong let out a breath of relief—
Nayun snatched up the knife beside her in a flash, while Suyeon and Hasol began scolding their friend.
"Are you insane?!"
"Seriously! No matter how hard things get, you don't do that! You can't think like that!"
"Huh? Wha? Guys... wait a second."
Yeoncheong tried to explain herself, and Nayun too, standing up with the knife in hand, moved to defend her friend the moment she saw the kitchen behind them.
But Hasol and Suyeon had no intention of listening, too busy delivering their lecture.
What finally stopped the pair's nagging was—
Grrroooowl.
The sound of a stomach growling from below.
Only then did Suyeon and Hasol fall silent and look down at Yeoncheong pinned beneath them.
Yeoncheong spoke in a voice barely above a crawl.
"I was... about to eat..."
Whether it was because she found the situation just as embarrassing and absurd as everyone else, her gaze stayed fixed firmly on some distant point.
In a car heading somewhere, Seoha checked the message that had come in from Suyeon and allowed herself a faint smile.
Seeing this in the rearview mirror, the driver glanced at her expression and, seizing his moment, spoke up.
"Miss, if you'd tell me what this is about, we could handle it for you—"
"That's all right. I just want to see her face again myself. I didn't get a proper look last time."
Seoha let the conversation drop and glanced out the window before asking,
"How much farther?"
The car, already deep in the city, had turned down a narrow, signless alley quite a while ago.
It was around the time the monotonous stretch of dim, lookalike alleys was starting to wear on her that the driver, after a brief pause, finally spoke.
"...We've arrived."
"You remember what I asked of you? Then, please."
"Of course, Miss."
As she always did, Seoha opened the door herself and stepped out into the alley.
How far had she walked in? From within the shadows came a voice she'd heard once before.
"Who the hell are you?"
A voice growling low, like it might lunge for her throat at any second.
But Seoha showed not the slightest ripple of disturbance. If anything, she answered it with a fresh, bright smile entirely out of step with the atmosphere.
"What a relief. From the look on your face, I'd say you liked my gift?"
"You crazy bitch! I asked how you found me!"
"What's so strange about that? All I had to do was dig around on social media. Like you did."
Exactly as the man himself had once done.
Starting from the social media account she'd learned from Suyeon, she'd hopped from account to account, piecing together scraps of personal information, then leaned on her family's resources to dig a little deeper.
And, as a lesson in being more careful from now on, she'd decided to inform him of that fact in person.
The male student steadied his breathing, let his anger cool, and lifted his head.
"Don't touch me ever again. What's that supposed to mean?"
"Smarter than I expected. It's better for both of us when we can talk things through, don't you think?"
But he didn't appreciate Seoha's air, as though she were looking down at him from somewhere above.
The man let out a sneer.
"You think a little personal information getting stirred up is going to scare me?"
Seoha tilted her head to one side.
A long sigh slipped out of her as her expression hardened.
"Ha... I take back the part about you being smart. You didn't come out here because you were scared out of your mind?"
"Birds of a feather, huh... Hey, seriously—did you really come to this creepy back alley alone, just because you told yourself to?"
His face twisted with fury, the male student advanced toward Seoha.
But.
"Stop."
At Seoha's ice-cold warning, the male student froze mid-step.
The red eyes glaring out of the darkness looked ready to devour him whole.
He could almost believe he was facing a vampire out of a movie, so vividly did those gleaming crimson eyes seem to glow.
Her eyes, narrowing ever so slightly, dropped to the male student's feet.
"Don't cross the line. The moment you do, I'm done talking too."
Right on cue, a burly man appeared from behind Seoha. The man in the perfectly fitted black suit bowed deeply and greeted her.
"My apologies, Miss. We're a bit late—I had the others standing by."
"No, it's fine. You arrived at just the right moment."
Stumbling backward in what he hoped looked like a natural retreat, the male student kept flapping his mouth.
"Ha! Knew you were a total lunatic. Can't talk me down, so you're going to shut me up instead? What is this, the whole world's a movie to you? Fine! See if all of you stay safe, then!"
Watching him do nothing but raise his voice, Seoha let out a soft, derisive laugh.
As if to say, you're the one who's watched too many movies.
"Why on earth would I kill you? Are you an idiot?"
With every word dismissed outright, the male student snapped.
"Excuse me?!"
"Killing someone makes the cleanup a nightmare. Someone like you, with no backup left, could've set up a 'please spread this after I'm dead' message somewhere. Am I wrong?"
Seoha took a single step toward him. His momentum already broken, the male student found himself shuffling back without meaning to.
"If I keep you alive, I can watch you to make sure you don't pull anything stupid. I can also find wherever it hurts—just like you did—and start stirring."
"Which is far more convenient, wouldn't you say? No risk involved, either."
The retreating student backed straight into a dead end.
Seoha continued her unhurried, measured approach, never once breaking stride.
"I hear small businesses are really struggling these days. For your parents' sake, if nothing else, you'd better live as a good boy from now on."
"You crazy—"
The mention of his parents set him off again, but that was as far as it went.
With the terrifying presence of the man looming behind him, all his threats amounted to was talk.
"Keep your mouth shut. I'm not finished."
Those red eyes, raised dangerously, permitted no further objections.
The crimson gaze watching him showed no change at all—only the corner of her mouth curled upward in a slow, sharp smile.
"And besides, killing someone only makes sense when you're roughly on the same level."
The fact that she was clearly smiling yet conveyed no emotion whatsoever—that hollow, dry expression—was enough to summon real fear.
"I can make you wish you were dead rather than alive. Your standing at school. Your parents. Your home, and the business they run. I know every last detail."
With each piece of personal information Seoha recited, the color drained further from the male student's face.
Perhaps she judged that this much was message enough.
Seoha slowly brought her hand toward the male student's throat.
"I already know everything about you—why would I bother with complicated preparations just to kill you? Squeeze the throat slowly and you die on your own, don't you?"
When her neatly manicured nails brushed the side of his neck, right along the thick vein running there, the man swallowed dryly.
Despite her hand being nowhere near large enough to actually strangle him, a brush with death itself seemed to pass over his skin.
Seoha, stopped barely a hand's width away, gave his shoulders a couple of light pats.
"After everything I've told you, I trust you understand what I mean?"
"Y-yeah. Of course."
"Remember this. The only reason you're walking out of here in one piece is that killing you would be tedious and annoying."
The male student's head, trembling violently, bobbed up and down.
"I'd better not hear so much as a whisper about you from now on."
A flick of Seoha's eyes.
The male student nodded that he understood, squeezed past the man blocking the alley, and bolted for all he was worth.
Only then—as though everything were finally over—did Seoha turn a smile on the man behind her.
"Thank you for your hard work, sir."
"Is it over, then?"
The chauffeur, drawing close, let out a deep sigh.
"These things ought to be left to professionals... I spent the whole time terrified you might actually come to blows. It took ten years off my life."
"I figured scaring him would be more than enough. Let's head home."
Seoha and the chauffeur made their way out of the alley in the direction the man had fled.
The driver stole a glance at Seoha's expression before speaking up.
"Still, Miss... what if that thug fakes his own death and spreads it around anyway?"
"If he's stupid enough to try, then when he dies in some random accident somewhere, people will just say he had it coming."
Bringing in someone her parents worked with regularly to grind him down properly was always an option—but she had no wish for her parents' ears to catch wind of any of this.
Having spat out a mouthful of thorned words, Seoha scrunched her face as if her mouth had gone bitter.
"Sir. Let's go home."
Without so much as a backward glance, Seoha left the pitch-black alley behind her.
Meanwhile, Yeoncheong, whose home had just been raided—
"Wow. I stood outside your door waiting for days, and here someone is living the easy life."
"I mean, seeing you eat a proper home-cooked meal, I'm starting to think we worried over nothing."
"And you're only feeding yourself, too. The rest of us don't even get a taste."
With three friends lined up on the bed, all staring her down, Yeoncheong couldn't tell whether the food was going down her throat or up her nose.
It was an early dinner, eaten in a fit of gloom after skipping lunch.
But complaining would only earn her sharp looks and more scolding, so she simply bowed her head and ate in silence.
She polished off the dinner—which had required a sip of water with every bite—in no time at all.
And just as she was about to do the dishes—
"Oh? So now you expect us to wait on you for the dishes too?"
A cold remark from who-knows-who.
Yeoncheong left the warm water running and knelt down in front of the three of them. It felt like the thing to do.
And then—
"Tell us what you did wrong."
The question dropped on her like a hammer of judgment.