Upset Win
"Oppa, you said you were washing the car… why leave the door open like—"
She never finished the sentence.
Her boyfriend was pinned against the wall, and Sang-hyuk still had a fistful of his collar. Hye-seon's eyes went wide. The hand holding her keys trembled.
"Aaaaah!"
She screamed. Sang-hyuk turned his head slowly, red light still smoldering in his eyes as he looked her over. He gave her a short, crooked smile, released Ji-hoon's shirt, and turned fully toward her.
"Well, well. Your girlfriend's a pretty little thing. Almost a shame to sell her off to some island bar."
"Who the hell are you?! Oppa, who is this man?!"
"Your future husband here is a deadbeat who can't pay what he owes. I came to collect."
Hye-seon stood frozen for a beat. Then the shouting started.
"Oppa, why did you take out a loan shark debt?! And you—! No matter how much my oppa borrowed, this is South Korea, a country under the rule of law! You think you can collect like this? Should I call the police?"
She didn't flinch. She glared at him, sharp and fierce.
Look at this one. Soft little thing on the outside, but she's got claws.
Mid-rant, something about Sang-hyuk's face snagged her attention. She stared hard.
"W-wait… have I seen you before? …Sang-hyeon oppa, or something like that…?"
"You've met him. It's Sang-hyuk. Shin Sang-hyuk…"
Ji-hoon croaked it out, still clutching his freed throat.
In an instant Hye-seon lunged at Sang-hyuk, seized his clothes, and hung on him.
"You bastard! You call yourself a friend?! He didn't pay you back so what—you're going to sell me to an island?! You piece of shit!"
The delicate-looking Hye-seon, once angry, looked half-mad.
Ah, this crazy bitch—do you know how much this shirt cost…
I could lose the friend and not care, but the clothes are another story!
Sang-hyuk decided it was time to wrap this up. He glanced back at Ji-hoon and smiled like a devil.
Ji-hoon had been finding his courage with his girlfriend in the room. That smile froze him solid again.
"Twenty million won plus interest. If it isn't paid by the end of this week… everything you own is mine. Including this woman."
Hye-seon's face went white.
"Wh… what did you say? You insane bastard!"
She fumbled for her phone to call the police.
Sang-hyuk locked eyes with her and held them.
"You're… fucking gorgeous."
"What?! You psycho!"
Hye-seon shouted.
"I want you."
The words left her so stunned she just stood there, staring into his eyes.
About ten seconds passed.
The focus in Hye-seon's pupils began to soften. The fury drained from her gaze. Her lips parted slightly. Her breathing quickened.
Right in front of Ji-hoon, Sang-hyuk lifted Hye-seon's chin with one finger—and kissed her.
She didn't resist. She stepped closer, rose onto her toes. When he pushed his tongue deep into her mouth, their tongues tangled. The soft lining of her mouth was soaked in his saliva. The taste of it sent a small tremor through her body. The hands that had meant to push him away went slack and clutched at his clothes instead.
When their lips finally parted, Hye-seon's eyes were completely unfocused. A thin sheen of spit glistened at the corner of her mouth.
Ji-hoon watched, shaking. His eyes hunted the room for a knife.
Sang-hyuk turned on him with a low, growling voice.
"Your woman is my collateral now."
"C… collateral?"
"You just watched me put the red tag on the goods."
Ji-hoon couldn't speak. He only trembled.
"Remember this clearly. Friday of this week, bank closing time. If you don't pay, I take her."
He looked at Hye-seon again, voice low and intimate.
"Take care of yourself. Don't get hurt… You're mine until that bastard pays every last won."
Then he brushed past her shoulder and walked out through the front door. The latch clicked shut behind him.
As he left the building, Sang-hyuk muttered to himself.
"Shame about the girl."
Inside the apartment, only Ji-hoon remained—pants soaked, slumped against the wall—and Hye-seon, standing vacant-eyed in the middle of the room.
At the same hour, in a hotel room, Yu-mi looked down at the husk of a man on the bed—a body reduced to little more than a mummified shell—and slowly put her clothes back on.
The dead man's face was twisted like a hundred-year-old corpse, yet the expression of pure rapture still frozen on it said he had died at the peak of pleasure.
Yu-mi's expression as she regarded the body was sour. The souls of thugs who lived like garbage—what people called ectoplasm—tasted bitter. At first she had hunted any man her instincts pointed her toward, but after devouring more than ten of them she knew the difference for certain. The souls of men who lived cleanly, who cultivated themselves, were far sweeter, and left her surging with power afterward.
She finally understood why the demons in Journey to the West had been so desperate to eat the monk Xuanzang.
"Next meal should be a priest or a monk."
Yu-mi pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she watched the city lights beyond the window—then her gaze slid toward a shadowed corner of the wall.
"I know you're there. Stop hiding and come out already…"
From the darkness, a human shape slowly resolved. A beautiful woman with a pure-looking ponytail and large eyes—except those eyes were sharp as blades, and a grotesque smile hung at the corner of her mouth.
"Did you enjoy your last meal?"
"Last? Tomorrow I'm going after a priest or a monk. Oh—by the way, do you know any temples or churches around here?"
The woman who had stepped from the dark gave a thin, cold smile.
"There is no tomorrow for the likes of you, newbie."
She pulled free her hairband. Long, lush black hair spilled down and swayed.
"A succubus who trespasses on another's territory pays with her life…"
"There was a rule like that? Didn't know."
Yu-mi said it with a bright, open face.
"Then I'll take over this area from now on. You can go somewhere else…"
The other woman frowned at the sheer gall of it.
"Who baptized a vulgar creature like you who doesn't even know manners?"
"I don't know either. I woke up and this was the body I had."
"Who is your godmother?"
"Don't have one."
"A lowborn bitch born by accident, then. I'll return you to dust."
The woman's hair began to rise toward the ceiling. From the tips, thread-thin sticky strands seeped out and hardened into needle-sharp points—like paint stretching from a brush lifted from its pot.
"I inherited this territory from my godmother and have lived here for five hundred years. In all that time, no one has ever dared invade my hunting grounds."
The sharpened ectoplasm that had bled from her hair-tips locked onto Yu-mi's heart.
Outside the hotel, two agents from the Shadow Team were trading radio traffic.
"Target confirmed entering the hotel room one hour ago. Appears to be alone at present."
"Wait—hold on!"
The agent watching a sensor array's screen shouted.
"Another signature detected. Looks like there's a second incubus-class entity."
Two of them?
The man in the driver's seat stared out the window and spoke low.
"Prep for the hunt. This time… we don't let them walk."
Yu-mi rose slowly from the bed. Beside her, the man whose essence she had just drained lay mummified and stiff.
She stood at the bedside and glared at the opponent aiming those strange, needle-tipped extensions of hair at her body.
"So what you're saying is, I trespassed on the hunting grounds of my exalted senior?"
No answer.
"Fine. What's Senior's name, then?"
"I see no need to give my name to a lowborn bitch like you. But… you will pay for stealing my prey."
In an instant the hotel room filled with killing intent.
Silver threads erupted from the senior succubus's hair-tips and cracked through the air like whips. The hardened points of ectoplasm streaked toward Yu-mi.
"Kh…!"
Three silver blades split and punched into Yu-mi's arm, thigh, and side. The wet sound of flesh tearing was small and sharp. Hot blood ran. Yu-mi clenched her teeth and fell back a step, but the assault did not stop. A grotesque smile curved the senior's mouth. The threads from her hair fused again, denser and faster, and carved open Yu-mi's shoulder, chest, and thigh in rapid succession. Pale skin flushed red in seconds. Her clothes were already blood-soaked rags.
Yu-mi kept giving ground. There was no way to block.
Cold glass pressed against her back—the window.
Fuck… what is this.
She twisted on instinct, tried to dodge, flailed her hands to bat the threads away. That was all she could do.
She had no godmother. No one had ever properly taught her.
"You don't even know how to use ectoplasm."
The senior succubus smirked, the corner of her mouth lifting.
Yu-mi had only ever known ectoplasm as something to absorb. She had never even imagined it could be forged into a weapon. So she could only take the beating.
An elongated lock of hair sliced deep across her side. Hot blood pattered onto the floor. Her breathing turned ragged; her vision swam. Her knees buckled.
Back to the wall, her whole body growing cold from how much blood she had already lost, Yu-mi finally dropped to her knees.
The woman approached at a leisurely pace. Above her head, thousands of the thickest, sharpest threads forged themselves into a spear and aimed dead-center at Yu-mi's heart.
"This is the end. Return to dust."
A moment of absolute crisis.
Yu-mi's mind went blank white. No time to think. No strength left to fight. Only the raw instinct to live remained.
And in that instant—
From just above the zipper of Yu-mi's jeans, from the lower belly where her womb sat, a deep violet aura suddenly burst outward. Ectoplasm she herself had not even registered, expelled by pure unconscious will. The energy soaked through the denim, bloomed across the fabric, stretched out horizontally, and honed itself into a blade like a battle-axe.
Almost in the same breath that the woman drove her spear toward Yu-mi's heart—
the violet axe-blade rising from Yu-mi's womb shot upward and smashed into the senior's jaw midair.
Thwack—!
A dull, clean sound of severance rang out.
The senior succubus's head split cleanly left from right, from crown to chin.