Stalker, Part 3
If it wasn’t the sea witch’s doing, then she was going to fly into a rage like last time and go off to kill humans again, wasn’t she?
They had barely managed to stop her when she’d hurled every curse in the book at Kim Woohwan and threatened to tie him up and stuff his ears full of obscene abuse.
Just thinking about having to go through that again made Won Hasin’s face drain of color in an instant.
“Uh… so it wasn’t you. Hah.”
Won Hasin began edging backward, slowly putting distance between himself and her. The sea witch’s eyes, fixed on him, flashed with the lethal glint of a beast.
“It wasn’t anything! I’m sorry! Then I’ll be on my way!”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
As Won Hasin turned to flee in a panic, the sea witch threw a king crab leg at him. The sharp tip punched through the hem of his pants and drove into the floor, nearly sending him sprawling forward.
Staggering, Won Hasin sank to the ground and stared at his trouser leg, shaking. The jagged crab leg had pierced the sturdy fabric of his tracksuit pants and pinned itself firmly to the floor.
No, what kind of move was that? Is she a ninja?
He groaned and tried to pull the crab leg free, but somehow it would not budge. If that had gone into his leg instead of his pants, he shuddered to think what would have happened.
In the meantime, the sound of heels clicking steadily drew to a stop right in front of him. Today the sea witch wore a sleek black pantsuit and black heels, and to Won Hasin she looked exactly like a grim reaper.
“My little brat. Your manners are awful. Why don’t you answer when someone asks you a question?”
The sea witch crouched in front of him with an easy, careless motion and smiled a cold smile.
I’m done for. I’m done for!
Song Bi-seo was on vacation today, too! How was he supposed to handle this all by himself?
Unable to run, trapped without a way out, Won Hasin lowered his head and cried inwardly.
The sea witch took his chin in a hand that was both cold and strangely soft, lifting his face. Won Hasin swallowed hard. The upward curve of her lips, the nails that brushed his jaw, were both chilling.
“You’d better tell me from the beginning to the end why stalkers came up all of a sudden. Tell me exactly what’s happened to Neoul, hmm?”
Her eyes, which had been rounded in a teasing curve, sharpened in an instant, as if warning him not to dance around the subject.
In the end, Won Hasin had to spill everything he’d been told over the phone that morning without leaving out a single detail.
Some time later.
Crk.
The sea witch’s teeth ground together with a dreadful sound, the noise of someone who was thoroughly, violently angry. She stroked Won Hasin’s hair with surprising gentleness and smiled.
Won Hasin trembled all over. He would have preferred it if she had yanked his hair out by the roots. This calm stroking was a hundred times scarier.
“Little brat.”
“Yes.”
Won Hasin answered quickly, following his survival instincts.
“You must’ve thought pretty poorly of me, huh?”
“N-no, of course not.”
“I said I’d get in the prince’s way, sure, but did you really think I’d go sending stalkers after a bunch of snot-nosed punks so they couldn’t sleep? Was your opinion of me that low?”
He flinched.
It wasn’t so much that he had thought her beneath him as that… he suspected she might try anything, no matter how far outside common sense it was.
She could imitate a human perfectly, beautiful and elegant as anything, but she wasn’t really human.
Won Hasin still remembered, as vividly as if it had happened yesterday, the scene from his childhood: the sea witch pouring some unidentifiable liquid over the head of the kidnapper who’d taken him, and the man vanishing without even spilling a drop of blood.
It was a memory so terrifying it was still fresh in his mind.
The kidnapper had disappeared without leaving even a splinter of bone behind, as if he had been a mirage. It had looked as though an invisible fire had incinerated him in an instant and turned him to ash.
She’d tossed away the empty bottle, and when she noticed the young Won Hasin had woken up, she had hurriedly withdrawn her killing intent. But by then, he had already seen everything.
That day, the sea witch had kept her distance as if she understood the fear in his heart.
“I came to rescue you. Are you hurt anywhere?”
That was all she’d asked, standing far away as they faced each other.
Six-year-old Won Hasin nodded, then burst into tears.
“Auntie, you’re scary!”
“I’m your granny, I tell you…”
She had waited like that, keeping her distance from him until his parents and grandfather arrived, summoned belatedly by her.
Even after that, for a few years, I think I kept that same distance whenever I met her.
She was still frightening, no matter what. So when had he started getting close to her again? Close enough to rush in and demand answers without thinking twice…
Have I lost my mind?
Thinking that this might be the day he truly saw how terrifying she could be again, Won Hasin squeezed his eyes shut.
* * *
In elementary school, Won Hasin had been a spoiled little brat.
As the youngest, with a bit of an age gap between himself and his siblings, he had been spoiled no matter what he did, always treated as cute and doted on.
His older brother, older sister, and even his cousins all gave way to him, and if he got rowdy or annoying, they usually forgave him.
So Won Hasin thought that was normal. He thought that was how things were supposed to be. He thought he should get everything he wanted, and that he was some kind of amazing person.
Then one day, he broke something his brother treasured. His brother, being kind, told him even that was fine, but in the end their mother found out and scolded him until he was in tears.
“Why are you yelling at me when Oppa says it’s fine? Mom, I hate you!”
He talked back, got scolded even harder, and was chased out into the yard.
He was crouched in a corner of the yard, crying, when the sea witch happened to come by to meet his grandfather. She spotted him on her way out after finishing her business.
“Ugh. Look at all that snot. Ew, disgusting.”
Since the kidnapping incident, she had never come near Won Hasin, only watched from a distance. Yet for some reason, this time she came a little closer and spoke first. Still, she kept about two meters between them.
“Why are you crying?”
She held out the ice cream he liked best and asked in a taunting tone. Won Hasin told her the whole story in a resentful voice.
“B-but where did you get that choco bar?”
“It was in the freezer.”
“Then it was mine! The choco bar is mine! Give it here!”
Too scared to go closer, he protested from where he stood. He also thought that since he was safely at home, the sea witch wouldn’t be able to lay a hand on him even if he spoke boldly.
But she peeled the wrapper off right in front of him and took a big bite of the ice cream.
“I was saving that because there was only one left! Why are you eating it, Auntie? That’s my favorite!”
Snorting hotly, Won Hasin glared at her, and the sea witch grinned back as if she were deliberately provoking him.
“Why? You can break someone else’s thing, but I can’t eat yours?”
Thud.
It felt as though he’d been struck on the head.
No one had ever spoken to Won Hasin like that, not once.
“Is everything in the freezer automatically yours?”
“I-it is mine…!”
“Your brother likes choco bars, too.”
“……!”
“He says the little crunchy bits in the chocolate ice cream are tasty. He sneaks them near the school and buys them with the allowance he saves up.”
He had no idea at all.
“He always gave things up for you. Because he loves you.”
“…….”
“But you broke your brother’s thing and don’t even feel sorry, so I guess you don’t love him. I saw him crying earlier.”
Won Hasin felt as if his heart had dropped to the floor. Something had clearly gone very wrong. He had made the brother who cherished him so much cry.
When his brother had said it was fine, he had truly believed it was fine. He had never once seen his brother cry, so he hadn’t understood how serious his mistake was.
What do I do…!
At a loss, Won Hasin stared at her while the sea witch held out a black plastic bag.
“Take this and go apologize to your brother.”
Won Hasin approached her carefully, one cautious step at a time. Then he took the bag from her.
Inside were choco bars, lots of them. Won Hasin’s eyes went round.
“The choco bars… did you buy these, Auntie?”
“Bought them with money I squeezed out of your grandfather.”
“Why are you squeezing money out of our grandfather!”
“Because I felt like it. Got a problem?”
“Y-you…!”
“Oh? Thinking of talking back? That face says you want to curse, but you don’t know any good words?”
“I do know how to curse! Do I look like a newborn to you? Like I don’t know any swear words? I just don’t say them because I don’t want to look low-class!”
“Then are you a newborn, or are you just a brat?”
When the sea witch smirked, Won Hasin’s face flushed bright red.
“N-no! I’m not a brat either! I’m in elementary school, so I’m basically an older brother now!”
“Pfft!”
She laughed at me again!
Annoyed to the point of combusting, Won Hasin forgot how scared he was and shot her a sharp glare.
“Fine, fine. Big brother. Big brothers have to take responsibility for what they do wrong. They have to know how to apologize, too. Your ice cream’s going to melt. Hurry up and go to your brother, you useless thing.”
“I was going already, anyway! Hmph!”
Won Hasin turned around and strode off, stomping hard enough to make the ground sound under his feet.
“That witch…! Who are you calling useless?”
He muttered the complaint under his breath, but loud enough that she could still hear. Even so, the sea witch did not drag him back by the ankles or give him a beating. Won Hasin escaped safely and ran to his brother.
* * *
After that day, Won Hasin massaged the shoulders of the adults around him and saved the allowance they gave him in a piggy bank.
The words his brother had said when Won Hasin bought a new replacement for the broken item were still vivid in his memory.
Thank you. The one you bought me is much better than the old one.
Maybe it had been a polite lie, but…
Because of that, I think I grew up a little less selfish than I otherwise would have.
Back then, he’d been puffing himself up and acting spoiled in front of the sea witch, but now that he thought about it, it had been a genuinely valuable lesson in many ways.
He’d learned that everything he’d been given all this time had not, in fact, been something that simply came his way by right. And he’d grown closer to his brother, too.
Still, no matter how he looked at it, he had probably been a fearless little bastard from childhood right up to now.
“Brat.”
The hand that had been harshly stroking his head was withdrawn. Won Hasin opened the eyes he’d been squeezing shut and looked at the sea witch. She had already stood up and was gathering her smartphone.
“I may step outside the law of humans now and then, but… I do have lines I won’t cross myself.”
“What’s the standard for those lines?”
“Well, that depends on the need of the moment.”
Huh. What kind of answer was that?
If the line changed every time, then how was it a line at all? Wasn’t it practically nonexistent?
Unable to hide his bewilderment, Won Hasin shut his mouth.
The sea witch pulled a pair of thin white gloves from her pocket and slid them on.
“For now, I’ll start with the little punks who apparently never listened properly in morality class.”
“Start with…?”
The sea witch’s expression was so cold as she put on the gloves that she looked exactly like a criminal preparing for a job, and Won Hasin yelped and clung to her leg.
“You can’t kill them!”
“I’m not going to kill them.”
“Really?”
“Hmm… they might suffer badly enough that they wish they were dead, though?”
“What?”
“Well, they’ll work through that on their own. Isn’t that just karma?”
Gyaah! What exactly are you planning to doooo?!
* * *
The trio of stalkers who had shown up at Jjokbit’s dorm and caused such a scare were caught the very next day. Representative Jake said there would be absolutely no leniency and immediately filed a complaint.
To prevent stalker problems from growing worse in the future, they had to show, as an example, that they would respond with force.
Official schedules were one thing, but following them to private schedules and invading private spaces could not be tolerated, both for the artists’ safety and mental health and for the sake of protecting their privacy.
It was no wonder even fans flatly said, “Stalkers aren’t fans.”
Representative Jake poured the money he’d been saving for emergencies into strengthening security. It was the leftover money after taking out the deposit on his leased apartment to fund the album.
Since the road manager was only Manager Gwak Yukpal, they hired one more manager who could handle both road duties and security.
They also strengthened the company’s security system and hired another security officer to handle the building guards and control the entrances.
Because they had suddenly moved from the new building back to the old one, everyone had been scrambling and too busy yesterday, and the staff had locked up the place among themselves. But they could not keep doing that forever.
The safety of the staff mattered just as much as the members’ safety. They also needed entrance security to prevent document leaks and theft.
“Then please take good care of us from now on, Ms. Mun Dong-dong.”
“Yes, sir! Leave it to me!”
Dong-dong’s eyes gleamed as she clenched her fist tightly. Her bag was packed full of sturdy little medicine bottles that the sea witch had given her.
All right! Dong-dong, gyeomsabok of the Dragon Palace, successfully employed as a guard for the prince’s company, Outdo!
Dong-dong began her work wearing a vest marked SECURITY and black gloves on her hands.
I’ll make sure that Prince can devote himself to finding the rabbit and to his work, and I’ll get rid of every single troublemaker standing in the way!