Puppeteer, Part 1
I picked the phone back up from the bedside. It was still throwing off that pale blue glow.
Dead center on the screen, beneath a purple icon throbbing with a grotesque pulse, a single word burned as sharp as ever.
Puppeteer. Absolute dominion — the power to work another person's flesh like a doll hung from strings.
A few minutes ago I'd been buzzing at the filthy games this ability promised. Now a cold, nameless shame was welling up from somewhere deep in my chest.
"...How long am I supposed to keep living like this?"
I stared blankly at the ceiling and sank deeper into the mattress. The last few days unspooled behind my eyes like a film reel — every last impossible thing. The violations I'd committed in frozen time. The thefts I'd carried out in a body no one could see. The Hollywood flesh I'd crossed oceans to devour. All of it had been sweet. And all of it had been hollow as a grave.
Why me? Why only me...
No matter how I turned it over, I always landed on the same answer. That day. The bizarre app I'd installed like a tantrum against my own pathetic life.
An app with the arrogant name of God's Prank — and it had torn my entire life up by the roots.
If this was supposed to be compensation for a wretched, worthless existence, the power was far too heavy. Far too dangerous. Pleasure stolen by trampling someone else's dignity was a castle built on sand — beautiful, and one tide from collapse. I couldn't keep getting drunk on this ghost of a power, bleeding out everything that made me human.
The decision settled. For the first time, I felt like I'd stepped out of the fog.
From now on... I'm going to live right.
Flushed, I woke the home screen. There it still sat, blinking with that same ominous pulse, tempting me — God's Prank Ver. 1.0. I didn't hesitate. I pressed my finger to the icon and held it down.
The icon shivered. A tiny word appeared above it.
A flicker of hesitation. One tap of that button, and I'd never taste that omnipotent pleasure again. A strange, aching regret washed through me. But the feeling that drowned it out was bigger — the sensation of a crushing chain falling away from my throat.
I pressed down. A soft tap — and the violet icon scattered into nothing, gone from the screen as if it had never been.
"...Done."
All that remained was an old, ordinary wallpaper. I let out a long breath and tossed the phone onto the bed. It felt like waking from a dream that had been too long, and far too vivid.
"I'm going to live a normal life now. That's enough."
The words rang through the empty studio apartment, lighter than I'd expected. Outside the window, the city kept making its indifferent noise. And I was greeting my first dawn as a whole person — free, at last, from God's Prank.
I showered thoroughly, mind at ease, and stepped out of the bathroom. Body and soul both felt genuinely lighter. I put on clean, pressed clothes instead of my crumpled pride and stood in front of the mirror.
The creature that used to stare back — eyes gleaming, drunk on a god's power — was gone. In its place stood a man with honest eyes. A little shabby, maybe. But honest.
I opened the front door and stepped outside. Fresh air stabbed the tip of my nose and sank all the way into my lungs.
"Yeah. This is real life."
After the sour smell of bodies and the damp, moldy air of that room, ordinary daylight was dazzling. I walked the busy streets with a light step. Just mixing in with other people, walking like anybody else — it felt like I'd finally found my place. A quiet smile spread across my face.
I was still savoring that sweet sense of freedom when it happened.
"...!"
Across the street, through a pane of glass, a presence so overwhelming I couldn't look away. Under the café's lavish lights, a beauty sat displaying a silhouette that was nothing short of perfect. A woman I could never forget even if I tried — the one who had carved the deepest wound and the deepest humiliation of my life. Seo-yun.
In an instant, the humiliation of that day — the one days of pleasure still hadn't washed away — came crashing back like a wave. My heart started hammering. I stopped walking without meaning to, held my breath, and watched her.
A man sat across from her. He looked decent enough on the surface, but he was sweating through a handkerchief, mopping his face over and over, pitching himself at Seo-yun with the desperation of a drowning man. The awkward smile. The groveling, almost pathetic body language. Those wretched eyes, constantly checking her face for a reaction. It was me. That day. As vivid as looking in a mirror.
Seo-yun looked down at him with an expression of pure arrogance. That lofty air of hers, those mocking eyes raking over him from head to toe — nothing had changed.
A moment later, before the man had even finished speaking, she picked up her designer bag without a shred of hesitation and stood. She left him with nothing but the cold line of her back, pushed open the café door, and stepped out onto the street. The man she'd left behind sat there hollow-eyed, staring at the empty seat across from him, collapsing in on himself.
Watching Seo-yun's back as she melted into the crowd with her chin held high, my fist clenched. That corner of my heart that had sworn to delete the app and live an ordinary life began to heave. Reason went dead. I started following her without thinking.
The vow to go back to a normal life had already shattered like glass the moment I saw the cold line of her back.
Seo-yun walked with the ease of habit into another high-end café tucked down an alley off the main street. I tracked her through the window — and what I saw made no sense.
She sat down across from a man as if she'd been expected. As if this had been the plan all along. The blank, cold face she'd worn a minute ago bloomed into a dazzling smile. She took the man's hand and laughed — a bright, bubbling laugh, as if something were genuinely delightful. It was so tender I couldn't believe this was the same woman who'd just crushed a man's pride and walked out.
But the real shock hit when I saw the man's face.
"...No way. Cheol-min? What the hell is that bastard doing here?"
The man stroking Seo-yun's cheek and smiling at her was none other than Cheol-min. My friend. The one who'd put on that sorry face and begged me to take a blind date off his hands. The son of a major corporation's executive — the so-called golden boy. What was he doing there?
The scattered fragments in my head started snapping together with a cruelty that made my stomach turn.
Seo-yun was Cheol-min's girlfriend. The two of them had been in on it from the start. Cheol-min threw "pathetic lives" like mine onto the altar as offerings. Seo-yun crushed those offerings into the dirt and got off on it. To them, this vicious little play was nothing more than a thrill — a game to spice up a boring day.
The man sitting hollow-eyed in that first café. Me, fleeing that day with blood in my tears. We were toys to them. Things they rolled around for fun. The blood in my body reversed direction.
"For fun... they did that to people for that kind of fun..."
Rage surged up and painted my vision red. The hand clenched into a fist started to shake. That noble resolution to delete the app and live an ordinary life was gone without a trace. Watching those two demonic lovers sneer at human dignity, something from the deep abyss inside me started lifting its head again.
In the dizzy instant the betrayal hit, my hand found my phone by instinct. The familiar chill of the device against my palm felt like it was laughing at me. I woke the screen in a rush. The message that should have been gone was still there, blooming as vivid as a poisonous mushroom.
I'd deleted the app. I was sure of it. I'd cut that chain with my own finger. But this cursed power had no intention of letting me go.
"I deleted the app... will it even work? Screw it. Let's find out."
I stared through the window at Seo-yun, leaning against Cheol-min's shoulder, laughing that coquettish little laugh. I wanted to rip that loathsome smile — the one she'd earned by stomping on other people's pride — right off her face. I poured every nerve I had into my fingertips and pictured invisible strings wrapping around her limbs.
In that instant, the phone in my hand vibrated so hard it felt like it was screaming.
Bzzzt—! Bzzzt—!
What happened next made me doubt my own eyes. On a home screen that should have been empty, violet data particles stormed into being. The vanished icon began reconstructing itself into a grotesque new shape.
"What? It reinstalled itself? And 2.0...? The version went up?"
My lips trembled. Deleting it had meant nothing. No — if anything, my rage and my hunger for revenge had pushed this nameless program to a higher stage of evolution. If 1.0 had simply granted superpowers, the violet fog pouring off 2.0 carried an authority far more ominous, far more overwhelming.
God's Prank, evolved. And at my fingertips — the Puppeteer's strings.
I lifted my head and looked back into the café. Cheol-min still had that winner's smile, his arm around Seo-yun's waist. Seo-yun was playing the happiest woman in the world. They had no idea. Not in their wildest dreams. The puppet they'd been yanking around had come back as a monster — and now it held their leashes.
A crooked smile on my face, I took a seat in a corner of the café, in a blind spot their eyes would never reach. The shame and fury of a moment ago had already cooled into something like reason. Cold reason.
I poured every ounce of my attention through the window, onto Seo-yun — smiling like a noble queen at Cheol-min's chatter. Then I pointed my index finger at empty air and bent it. Very slowly. Downward.
What happened next was impossible.
Seo-yun's body — still holding Cheol-min's hand so affectionately — gave a fine tremor, as if a current had run through her. Then she locked up, rigid as a machine whose power had been cut. Those beautiful eyes went wide with confusion, darting in every direction. Below the neck, she couldn't move a single millimeter of her own will.
"...Huh? Seo-yun? What's wrong?"
Cheol-min shook her hand, puzzled. Seo-yun couldn't answer. Her lips were sealed shut. Only her eyes still moved — trembling, wild with terror.
"Nngh... Ch-Cheol-min..."
I smiled coldly and moved my finger again. This time, a pull — toward me. Seo-yun's upper body slammed forward onto the table, dragged by invisible strings, utterly independent of her own will.
"Nngh...."
Crash!
The coffee cup toppled, soaking her white dress in brown liquid. She couldn't even scream. Her mind was probably screaming at her to get up, to get out of this humiliation right now. But her body belonged to me. Completely.
From my corner of the café, I watched it all unfold, clicking my finger joints one by one. The script for the puppet show about to begin was known to me alone.