Stalking, Part 5
The news that the Sea Witch had gone to see Dongdong had reached Won Hasin’s ears as well.
Of course it had. The driver who had taken the Sea Witch to Won Hasin’s house was employed by the Won family.
“I heard you gave Dongdong a whole pile of medicine bottles and issued some strange instructions?”
“I did. Here.”
The Sea Witch curved her mouth into a sly smile and pulled a bottle from the inner pocket of her coat, handing it over. Won Hasin turned the bottle over in his hands, inspecting the clear pink liquid inside from every angle.
“What is this?”
As if debating whether to answer, the Sea Witch rested her chin on her hand and stared at Won Hasin for a moment before nodding.
“Well. I suppose I can tell you. You’re not the sort to do something foolish.”
“...?”
She stood and jerked her chin.
“Come with me.”
The Sea Witch led Won Hasin to a crowded street. With a gloved hand, she soaked a handkerchief in the liquid and let it drop to the ground.
“Oh! Excuse me! You dropped this just now!”
A woman passing by picked up the handkerchief and returned it to the Sea Witch.
“How kind of you.”
The Sea Witch gave the woman a gentle smile. For a brief moment, the woman was dazed by her bewitching beauty.
“Unnie, you’re so pretty!”
“I know.”
The Sea Witch winked at the woman, who had begun fawning over her with sparkling eyes, then turned away. Won Hasin trailed after her with obvious reluctance.
“Is this a potion that makes people fall for you, ma’am?”
“What?”
The Sea Witch looked at him in disbelief, then snorted.
“Do you really think I need something like that?”
She rolled up the handkerchief in her palm, then turned her glove inside out. The handkerchief slipped neatly into the glove, sealed away from touch. In that state, she tied the glove’s opening shut and tucked it into her pocket.
“You little brat. Do you think a beauty like me is common? I can make hundreds of people fall for me in a day without borrowing a potion’s power.”
She laughed derisively and pulled down the brim of her wide hat to cover her face. Then, when she lifted it again, her original face was gone, replaced by a plain, ordinary one.
Even her hairstyle had changed from a black bob to long brown hair.
“Gah!? Ma’am? W-who are you?”
“You’re shocked, are you?”
The Sea Witch, whose true form was a giant octopus, was a master of disguise. Changing her face and hair was nothing. If she wanted, she could alter her body shape and skin texture with complete ease.
“Now. Let’s go follow her.”
She tossed the hat to Won Hasin, then turned her long brown hair as she looked back toward the woman they had just seen. Soon after, she began tailing her.
Still too dazed to process what was happening, Won Hasin followed after her.
The street was full of people. The woman entered a cafe. The moment her eyes met the staff member behind the counter—
“I’d like an iced Americano, please.”
The cafe worker, who had been dulled into blank fatigue, suddenly lit up.
“Ma’am, excuse me, but what perfume are you wearing?”
“Perfume? I didn’t put any on today.”
“Really? As soon as you came in, there was this incredible scent...,”
The worker lowered his gaze, suddenly shy. His ears had already turned bright red.
“Huh? I can’t smell anything. Maybe shampoo?”
The woman looked genuinely puzzled. After taking her order, the worker made the drink, then wrote his number on a tissue and handed it to her.
“Um... ma’am. If you come again next time, I’ll give you the drink and cake on the house. Please come by again.”
“Pardon?”
“I, I’d like to see you again... Is that all right? Maybe we can meet again next time...”
The man, who had gathered every scrap of courage he had, was red to the tips of his ears.
“My, my...”
The Sea Witch, seated in a corner of the cafe, pointed at the two of them with her chin and smiled.
“See?”
Won Hasin sat across from her and slid down his sunglasses, lifting an eyebrow.
“Isn’t that just a perfectly normal scene of people falling for each other at first sight and exchanging numbers?”
“Is that all you got out of it? Don’t their shy expressions look alike?”
“Well. They do suit each other.”
“Exactly.”
The Sea Witch looked on with satisfaction. Won Hasin hit his chest in frustration.
“So what does that even mean? What does the potion have to do with anything?”
Say it in words I can understand, you witch!
Why do you always talk halfway and leave it hanging?
He was screaming inside, too irritated to voice it aloud, when the Sea Witch finally gave him a clear answer.
“This potion is a love potion that draws in people who are similar to the one who uses it.”
“Huh?”
“If an ordinary person applies it to their body, someone who resembles them in spirit, someone whose temperament fits theirs as though they were soulmates, will recognize them at a glance and come to them.”
As if by fate.
The Sea Witch watched the fresh-faced man and woman with soft eyes. Then she turned back to Won Hasin.
“But what do you think happens if stalkers, those little pests called sasaengs, use it?”
“Don’t tell me... a stalker gets a stalker?”
The corners of the Sea Witch’s mouth curled upward. As a malicious smile was drawn over the plain, kind-looking face from moments before, it became chillingly wicked.
“Aren’t humans always drawn to their own kind?”
The Sea Witch stood, took Won Hasin’s hat from him, and put it on her head. In an instant, her beautiful original face and black bob were restored.
The wide brim of the hat hid her features completely, keeping CCTV from catching her face.
Won Hasin began to suspect whether the face he had thought of as her real one had been real at all, or whether this was also just another disguise.
And the way she handled people without blinking, ruthless and absolute, with an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth cruelty, sent a fresh shiver down his neck. Gooseflesh rose over his entire body.
As he stood and followed her, he thought, I absolutely must never get on her bad side...
The Sea Witch was a formidable ally, but when she was not on your side, she was terrifying.
* * *
Once Dongdong began scattering the Sea Witch’s special love potion, the number of sasaengs showing up at the company and the dorm dropped dramatically.
Contrary to the Sea Witch’s warning that the effect would not be obvious right away, it was startlingly fast and unmistakable.
Some sasaengs met someone just as obsessive and twisted as they were and, in the throes of a fierce romance, lost all interest in idols.
Some suffered so deeply from the perspective of the people they had been stalking that they were struck by a hollow sense of defeat and quit sasaeng life altogether.
Others refused to give up and kept showing up stubbornly, only to find a stalker every bit as relentless as they were shadowing them twenty-four hours a day, snapping photos nonstop, until they couldn’t stay in one place for long and had to leave.
There were even the rare absurd cases of couples stalking together...
“Screech! Those leech-like things!”
Dongdong, disgusted, secretly spat poison at them and sent them off to the hospital.
“As if I’d put up with this. I’ll really do it, you know! Tsk!”
Thanks to that, the Jjokbit members and Outdo staff were finally able to come and go from work in peace. The change happened in only a matter of days.
* * *
At dawn on November 25, the members hurried out of the dorm for their final practice and showcase rehearsal.
Baek Yuri, the first to finish getting ready, looked around the quiet dormitory grounds, amazed that not a single ant seemed to be passing by.
“How did this happen? Until just the other day, people were swarming here morning and evening.”
There had even been plenty of times when sasaengs suddenly popped out from the stairwell the instant the members stepped out the front door, shoving their phone cameras in their faces or trying to start conversations.
That was why Representative Jake was already working hard to find a new place for them to move into as soon as possible.
“Well, I don’t know why, but isn’t better just better?”
“Yeah!”
Baek Gi-yeom and Woo Cheong came out with slightly tired steps, but their voices were much brighter as they answered.
“...The number of unknown calls and calls with hidden caller ID has gone down too.”
Lee Gal-chae smiled faintly, saying he no longer needed to keep his phone turned off.
He had to keep it on as much as possible in case the homeroom teacher from the kindergarten his younger siblings, or youngest sibling, attended tried to contact him, but until now he had been plagued by so many strange calls that it had become a headache.
Out of necessity, Lee Gal-chae had been keeping his own smartphone turned off and handling messages through TokTok on a spare phone.
“It’s quiet enough to live again! Let’s smash today’s showcase, fighting!”
Ha On-ha held out his hand. One by one, the members stacked their hands on top of it. Woo Cheong gestured toward Representative Jake.
“Mr. Ikhoo! Put your hand in too!”
“Yes. Then I’ll also...”
Even Jake, who had been hanging back, carefully placed his hand on top. Woo Cheong shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Jjokbit!”
“Let’s make it shine!”
Together, they shouted the rallying cry and threw their hands up high. Unlike before, when their hands had gone in different directions and the whole thing had been a mess, now they all raised their hands upward in unison.
Neoul, who lifted his hand the highest, looked around at the members and Representative Jake with a smile.
They were all nervous ahead of the debut showcase, of course, but they looked far more at ease now that they no longer had to waste their energy arguing with sasaengs on the way to work.
And Manager Gwak...
“A movie? Yes, I’d love that! I really do! Ah, I’m in the middle of work right now, so I’ll call you later. Yes. Let’s keep fighting through the day! Yes. I want to see you soon too. A movie... yes...”
Neoul looked at Manager Gwak Yuk-pal, who was on the phone.
He had started a new romance. After hanging up in a shy voice that did not suit his burly appearance at all, Manager Gwak scratched the back of his head awkwardly under the members’ gazes, which had narrowed as they stared at him.
“Ahem... everyone, please get in the car and check the headcount!”
“Whoa! Manager-nim, are you seeing someone? Older or younger? How did you meet?”
Woo Cheong fired off question after question like a student badgering his homeroom teacher to tell him about his first love.
“W-well... I was packing lunch boxes and driving back when it suddenly started raining, so I happened to help a little...”
“Whoa, whoa!”
“They’re older than me, but they asked me out first...”
Manager Gwak’s embarrassed face was turning red all over.
“So you’re going to see a movie? What kind of movie? Horror? Comedy?”
Woo Cheong asked, eyes full of curiosity. Other people’s love lives were always entertaining.
Seeing how Manager Gwak was sweating buckets, Baek Yuri stopped Woo Cheong.
“Cheong, Manager-nim’s uncomfortable. Let’s get in the car first. Questions later.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Neoul, be careful not to bump your head. On-ha gets carsick, so sit in the front.”
“Yes.”
“Okay~”
At Baek Yuri’s words, the members got into the van one after another. Representative Jake would head out separately in his used car.
“I’ll check the headcount. One.”
“Two~”
“Three...!”
“Four!”
“Five.”
“...Six.”
“Seven! That’s the last number!”
Starting from the oldest and, if they were the same age, in order of who was born earlier, the members counted from one upward. The order was Baek Yuri, Baek Gi-yeom, Yeo Do-bin, Ha On-ha, Neoul, Lee Gal-chae, and Woo Cheong.
“Yes. We’re departing! Put on your seat belts!”
The van carrying the members headed toward Jamsil Indoor Gymnasium, where the showcase would be held.