92.999... Cha-ka-cha-ka-cha-ka!
Cha-ka-cha-ka-cha-ka-cha-ka!
"Why the fuck have you been shaking that thing so vulgarly since earlier?"
"Why? You think every time a guy grabs something and shakes it, it's him jerking off?"
"You've been sexually harassing me nonstop. Should I call the cops?"
"Yeah, right—you don't even have a smartphone, you loser~."
When she'd been nabbed by these criminals, they'd stripped her of her cash, and they'd smashed her smartphone to dodge police tracking. She must've had some subconscious inkling of the hellish future awaiting her, which was why she'd desperately hidden her foster mom's card on her body even after losing the money and phone and getting restrained.
"What makes humans the least human is boredom. It's bosom buddies with sloth."
"So what? You're just a know-it-all with no education—super cringey."
"Even someone lacking in book smarts picks up what they need through experience. I figured it out grinding away day and night at that goddamn office job. None of my life was under my control. Preset tasks, obligations I had to shoulder, spinning that eternal hamster wheel—suddenly everything in the world felt tedious and empty."
"......"
"To keep from losing yourself in that boredom, you gotta do something besides breathing. Like posting gross pics on anonymous boards to troll people, or grabbing some kongnamul gukbap. This right here? Prime masturbation for killing boredom."
"So you're basically admitting you're jerking off next to a high school girl!!!!!"
"I'm just gripping a 500ml cola bottle and shaking it up and down! What the hell would a brat like you know!!!!!!!!!"
Screaming at each other in the car like banshees while driving, we somehow ended up back at the luxury apartment complex. It was late night, so the daytime security had switched to night shift, and the fancy, subtle exterior lights you couldn't see during the day lit up the whole place. Anyone living here would probably fancy themselves the protagonist of the world at least once. Elegant celebrity life by day, superstar shining bright in the cold, dark city by night.
But I preferred Hongdae's cheap-ass glitz over Gangnam's posh shine, and Hongdae's rowdy darkness over Gangnam's stuffy quiet. People should live according to their station, after all.
"Alright, let's head in~."
"Hey, stop! Let go of that! I really don't wanna go home!"
"Heeeead in~~~~~~."
"You asshole!!!!!!!"
I kicked away the security guard charging to stop me, hoisted the squirming schoolgirl over my shoulder like a sack of rice, and kept moving. A few apartment residents poked their heads out at the commotion midway, but I told them if they didn't want to blow their hard-earned cash on lifetime medical bills, stay the fuck inside.
In the freight elevator, I pinned the thrashing girl with one hand and checked the missed calls piling up on my smartphone with the other. Messages from S-man and the Mad Woman, each hunting me down for different reasons. My employees love their boss way too much—it's a problem.
"Jesus' disciples lived fat and died happy without him—what'll it take for these idiots to wise up?"
Not that I'm blasphemously claiming to be Jesus or anything, but whatever. This ain't 2,000 years ago; gotta view it from a modern lens.
The sluggish freight elevator finally hit the target floor, and I headed straight for Choi Sangjun and Imi Jin's place. I rang the bell, and S-man opened up.
"Wait, hold on! Who's this? Why's he in our house?!"
"Calling your foster parents 'those people' but this is 'our house'?"
"......"
With the suddenly silent schoolgirl in tow, I followed S-man into the spacious living room. The terrace windows connected to it were curtained tight—no light leaking out.
"Alright, now the stars of today's show are all here. You, me, and ours. Basic human society setup. Don't overthink it—like the starter pack you get at the beginning of a game."
I tossed the schoolgirl onto one end of the sofa and eyed Choi Sangjun and Imi Jin, bound tight to chairs. Gone was the doting-parent vibe; now they were foaming at the mouth, berserk with some boiling-over desire they couldn't contain.
"Hilarious. In this day and age, a couple loaded enough for luxury apartments both going rabid like rabies in South Korea—must be shit security and hygiene, huh?"
"Who knows. What I do know is their condition tanked hard while I was recording and interrogating them."
"Did you sprinkle chili powder in their eyes or something?"
"First, I tied them up and set up all the recording gear. Then placed the 'dolls' from Yonghwa Seonnyeo all over the house. Had to check for psychic phenomena during interrogation to verify the demon's presence."
"Good work."
I checked the laptop on the wooden table, cycling through feeds from different surveillance cams. Master bedroom, study, schoolgirl's room, storage, bathroom, kitchen—six spots total. Each doll had a talisman, and all were mutating differently.
The one in the couple's bedroom had split clean in half, spilling red beans and rice from inside. The study doll's head was ripped off, guts leaking. Schoolgirl's room: writhing live on the bed. Storage: limbs severed, stuffed in a box. Bathroom: one arm gone, bobbing in a full tub. Kitchen: kitchen knife plunged in its gut.
"When did they turn like this?"
"About an hour ago, time-wise. Before that, they were begging to be freed—said they'd give money, anything, just spare their lives. I told them over and over I'm not a burglar."
"And then?"
"Then they stopped the crying and pleading, started growling like beasts. Check the live living room recording file."
I pulled up the real-time living room footage on the laptop as instructed. S-man dragged a chair up, sat in front of them, and calmly lectured on "Why You Must Believe in Jesus," like a Daechi-dong top tutor teaching Intro to Jesus Studies. The couple just begged for mercy, ignoring him—until suddenly they froze, then flipped.
They whispered at rapper-speed, so I slowed to 0.25x.
I slammed the laptop shut and stepped up to the couple.
"Can't hold back, huh, Mr. Choi Sangjun? Your church-obsessed wife killed the spark ages ago—sexless marriage. No easy outlet for that lust anymore. So you turned to kids who obey for cash: compensated dating. Middle-aged libido wilting away, suddenly blazing like wildfire—yeah, gotta be torture. Bet you've been wondering why your sex drive exploded outta nowhere. Ten sexless years, body aging day by day."
I grabbed Choi Sangjun's hair—teeth chattering—and stared into his bloodshot eyes. The red pupils fled like cowards, leaving just whites.
"Next, Ms. Imi Jin. Not a cradle believer, but dove into church ten years back. Late adoption anxiety, crumbling marriage gripes—you needed an outlet. Found solace in the 'haven for all,' locked eyes with the pastor, shelled out fat tithes for some action... Plot even third-rate morning soaps wouldn't touch. If you two were that horny, shouldn't you have filled each other's gaps?"
No way they'd get it now. Half-mad, thrashing already. Same red pupils vanished from Imi Jin's eyes. I turned away.
"Gotta purge this rabid mania first—time to brew some meds. Let's see... Google Book, give me answers!"
I pulled out the thin-chain-sealed grimoire; it eagerly snapped the seal and fanned pages wide. The page detailed a remedy to restore sanity in mania induced by evil spirits.
In the kitchen, I dumped half an onion, half a garlic bulb, half-spoon salt, and half-cup water into a stainless bowl, gripped it one-handed, and mashed hard. Strained the pulp, extracted the juice, heated a frying pan like oil, cracked an egg—yolks only. As the sunny-side-up sizzled tasty, I mashed it one-handed, dripped the runny yolk into the reserved whites.
The clear, sticky whites turned instantly: half black, half white.
Spooned it out—black part to the man, Choi Sangjun; white to the woman, Imi Jin.
They both slumped forward in sync, then hemorrhaged from below. Lust-possessed? Liberate by destroying the source. Inevitable.
I slowly turned from them and said,
"Explain."