20. The Worst Newlywed Home (2)
As long as I didn't take off the hat, I could keep living with both my presence and my appearance hidden.
But keeping the hat on all the time was pretty suffocating.
Still, I was lucky the weather wasn't too hot right now. Once it got a little warmer, it would probably be miserable.
Ugh. Fuck. Just thinking about it makes my head spin. Is there some way around it?
I took off the hat. Right now, my appearance was probably exposed. The sound of me moving would be audible too.
What was that woman in the bathroom thinking as she listened to the sounds I made outside?
Had she been straining her ears toward the silent outside, planning to run?
And then, once sound appeared, had she given up?
My head felt gross. I wanted to wash it.
I'd washed my lower half, but not my head. Keeping the hat on the whole time made it feel stuffy.
It hadn't bothered me this much before, but once I became conscious of it, I wanted to wash it even more.
The other condition that came with the hat. A person who resents me.
Now I had a woman. And an apartment too.
Since I had the card key, I could enter this place anytime.
That woman couldn't leave carelessly because she didn't know what was going to happen.
But that woman still didn't know my face.
In that case, what would happen to her resentment?
Since she didn't know me, did that mean she couldn't resent me?
If I killed the three bastards at the hospital, would the condition stop being met?
I wanted to check. Because I was curious.
But doing that would be a real hassle.
First, I'd have to bring one of the three at the hospital over here.
That way, even if the condition didn't match, I could immediately inject the condition of resenting me into that woman.
It was still a bit early to go to sleep. And this was something worth checking at least once.
If I was going to keep using this skill, I needed to nail down conditions like this for certain.
I put the hat back on. Then I used Invisibility.
Then I opened the bathroom door. The woman flinched and stared at the open door.
There was no way she could see me. But she rolled her anxious eyes around, looking hard.
A pitiful sight.
But I was the one who made her this way. So feeling sympathy or whatever would be a fucking stupid thing to do.
The stockings tied around her wrists were still there. She apparently hadn't even thought about untying them.
So I just closed the door. And stood the comb up again.
Now that she knew I could suddenly open the door to check on her, she wouldn't even consider trying anything.
She already couldn't do it before, and now she'd be even less likely to.
So I went straight outside.
I quietly closed the front door. The lock chirped, but I wasn't worried.
Even if that woman heard the door lock, she wouldn't come out. One hundred percent.
Still, just in case, I stood a lighter up in front of the front door. I had to do at least that much so I could check right away later.
I headed straight to the hospital. The road to the hospital was quiet.
Darkened streets. Streetlights still on.
The city was still alive. Just because the world had become like this didn't mean everything stopped and froze immediately.
But the humans who made up that city weren't the same.
People holding their breath, watching for an opening as if they were dead. That was probably why the streets were so quiet.
Before going to the hospital, I stopped by the police substation again.
And I grabbed the handcuffs. Fortunately, things like the handcuffs were still intact. So I took them all.
I arrived at the hospital. The three bastards were still alive. Tenaciously.
Was this what they called the will to live? Even tied up like that, impressive. Maybe it was because I'd set them up with IV fluids?
Well, it had only been one day. At this level, sure, they could hold out.
I left the smallest of the three and killed the other two.
Both were 1 Coin. People who had never killed anyone.
What kind of courage had brought them outside? If they'd just stayed holed up, they wouldn't have ended up like this.
I untied the remaining one. His eyes and mouth too, all of it. Then the bastard collapsed as if crumbling.
"Get up. If you don't want to die."
Hearing my voice, the bastard rolled his eyes. But of course, there was nothing for him to see.
"If you make me say it twice, I'll make you like those two. So get up."
The bastard barely managed to raise his body. Then, maybe because his legs had fallen asleep, he collapsed again.
But he pushed against the ground and got up again. Because it was obvious what would happen if he didn't.
"Go out to the first floor."
The bastard walked out unsteadily. His movements were sluggish and annoying, but I followed anyway.
When we left the hospital and passed in front of the convenience store, I spoke to him.
I told him to go in and grab anything. Something he could eat while walking.
The bastard hurried inside. Then he came out with both hands full of food.
He didn't even have the nerve to try running.
It was probably because of the Invisibility, as expected. He had no idea where I was, so of course he wouldn't.
The bastard went where I told him to go while stuffing his face with food.
He must have been fucking starving. Watching him wolf it down, he looked like a total beggar.
Anyway, the bastard moved obediently and eventually ended up at the apartment.
We went down to the underground parking garage, came in through the shared entrance, and went up to the fifth floor.
The lighter I'd stood in front of the front door was still there. Meaning the front door had never been opened.
Since I hadn't said anything in particular, the bastard was still standing there anxiously, eating what he was holding one by one. I spoke to him.
"Press the elevator button."
The bastard immediately pressed the button.
He looked puzzled about why I was calling the elevator after making him walk all the way up.
Whether he understood or not, the elevator arrived right away and the doors opened quietly.
"Get in. And press the first floor."
The bastard's expression brightened a little. He looked like a faint hope had flickered through him—was I letting him go?
But while I held down the button, I pulled the trigger on him.
Bang! A sound only I could hear.
Then the bastard stared at his bleeding chest as if he couldn't believe it, dropped the food with a thud, and collapsed.
A message popped up immediately. It said I'd obtained 1 Coin.
This was really nice. Because I could tell intuitively whether someone was dead or not yet.
Without this, I would've had to check one by one whether the person I shot was dead or not.
That would've been a real pain.
I stepped into the elevator. Then, holding the door-open button, I looked at the mirror.
My reflection wasn't visible in the mirror.
In other words, that meant there was still a person who resented me.
Interesting. Was it that woman?
Since I'd never released the Invisibility, she still didn't know who I was. She wouldn't know my face or even my exact height.
She might know my dick size, though.
Anyway, it seemed certain right now that that woman resented me.
So the Invisibility hadn't been released, right?
I stepped out of the elevator like that. The doors closed and it went down to the first floor.
I didn't know if anyone would use it, but that person would probably get a hell of a shock.
Since there was a corpse inside the elevator.
After grabbing the lighter, I opened the front door with the card key and came inside.
And I neatly took off my shoes. This was a place I'd be using now, so I should take my shoes off.
I'm a polite Korean, after all.
The master bathroom. The comb was still standing there. The woman apparently still hadn't even thought about coming out.
But something suddenly occurred to me.
Was the skill really activating because the woman in there resented me?
Or was that woman irrelevant, and someone else was resenting me?
That seemed possible. In my twenty-eight years of living, I didn't think there had never been a single person who resented me.
That would be a stretch. It wouldn't make sense.
Thinking about it that way made things a little ambiguous. What if someone resented me and then forgot about it over time?
What if, when my name came up again, they went, "Oh? That bastard?" and remembered resenting me?
What would happen then? Would that person count as resenting me too?
It was a difficult question. Either way, I couldn't know right now.
Killing that woman would make it certain, but to do that I'd have to bring another spare here first.
So for now, I had to leave that woman alone.
Besides, to make things certain, I'd have to reveal myself to that woman.
That way, I'd definitely have at least one person who resented me.
I took off the hat. I took off my clothes. I was naked.
I opened the bathroom door. The woman flinched at the sight of me naked.
"Get up."
The woman got up awkwardly. Now that the unseen terror had taken physical form, how did she feel?
Would she think it was less frightening? Or more horrifying?
"Hold out your hands."
The woman held out her hands. Trembling.
I untied the stockings bound around her wrists, and her hands were freed.
"There. Your hands are free now. And this bathroom has all sorts of things in it. So? Are you going to come at me? Are you going to struggle and fight to survive?"
The woman glared at me. But it wasn't the kind of glare that wanted to tear me apart on the spot.
Eyes full of fear. This woman was scared, but she had no choice but to glare.
Because she couldn't exactly gaze at me lovingly.
"You can try. But if you fail, you'll go through something pretty horrible. So horrible that dying would be better. So go ahead and try all you want."
Words that sounded like bluffing.
But they wouldn't sound that way to this woman.
This woman knew I could turn invisible. And she had no idea about the conditions.
So she couldn't do something like that. She hadn't even been able to come out of the unlocked bathroom, so how would she dare.
"I'm going to sit here, so wash my hair."
I said that and sat down on the small bath stool in the bathroom.
The woman hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to do, then finally picked up the showerhead and wet my hair.
A truly dangerous act. This woman was now behind my back. And she was holding a showerhead in her hand.
If she lifted that showerhead and brought it down on my head, that alone could deal me a serious blow.
But I wasn't worried.
Maybe it was arrogance on my part. Maybe it was the recklessness of someone who'd never taken a real hit.
But no matter what happened, I felt like I could subdue a woman like this.
More than anything, this woman didn't have the guts to do something like that.
So I was actually calm. As if daring her to try.
Just as I thought, the woman obediently washed my hair. Carefully, so shampoo wouldn't get in my eyes.
She didn't attack me once, not while washing my hair or while rinsing the shampoo out.
I stood up. Then I held out the shower towel hanging on the wall.
The woman took it, sprayed body wash on it, and worked up a lather.
Then, looking like she really didn't want to, she wiped my body. Every corner. Even my dick. All of it.