I'll Show You a Demon
I tapped the nose of the puppy plush with my index finger and whispered.
“Well done.”
[ Hehe! I did great, right? ]
Shielding it behind my back so Yoo Jinchae couldn't see, I asked Nabi to open the door. The plush's back split along the spine and a black hand emerged, tugging at the firmly shut door handle a few times until…
—Crack. Creak. Clunk.
[ Ta-da! ]
The door opened.
……Granted, "tore open" might be the more accurate word. But that wasn't important right now.
“Teacher, the door is open.”
I delivered this joyful news to Yoo Jinchae without delay!
She pointed at the half-torn door, then at me, with trembling hands.
“……How did you open the door? It was locked, wasn't it?”
I found the look of fear in her eyes a little odd, and then it clicked. Ah… right. She must have been overwhelmed at the thought of finally escaping.
Of course. She's been trapped in here longer than I have. It makes sense.
Gazing at her with sympathy, I lifted the door handle Nabi had ripped off.
“It opened when I pushed a little harder.”
Technically not a lie. Nabi did it, not me.
I brought the stiff-frozen Yoo Jinchae over and planted her right in front of the door. Sticking just our heads out, we saw a long, dark corridor stretching away, with the sparsely blinking sensor lights as the only illumination.
No sign of anyone, though.
Muffling my footsteps, I strode out into the corridor without hesitation. I felt no fear.
Abducting someone on their way home from work? That crosses the line.
Or maybe my brain had simply given up on rational thought, drowned in rage.
“Shall we head straight on down this way?”
“……What? Oh, wait, what?!”
“Personally, I think we should move as fast as possible.”
Having never been taught how to handle an abduction situation, I had no idea what we were actually supposed to do.
“Ah, well…. How should I put it. Since it's so dangerous, maybe we should go back the way we came, put our heads together, and plan things out first? Or…. wait for a rescue? Something like that….”
At Yoo Jinchae's words, her eyes darting around in circles, I shook my head.
“No. If they find out later that we undone our restraints and opened a locked door to get out, we might face even worse confinement or retaliation. And….”
I fumbled, trying to put my feelings into order, then gave up and just said it.
“If I'm going to die either way, I want to make the kidnappers' lives a tiny, tiny bit more miserable before I go. It's obvious they'll bust their asses searching for us once they notice we're gone.”
That said, rage boiling over or not… I still intended to move with the utmost caution.
Escape comes first, after all.
The moment the words left my mouth, I quickly regretted how flippant my tone had come out compared to usual.
Yoo Jinchae stared at me blankly for a moment, swallowed once, and answered.
“……Honestly? Same.”
……I'm sorry, what?
“Those bastards drove us around with the air conditioning OFF! I mean, it was boiling hot! And the sweat, don't even get me started on the sweat smell — just thinking about it makes me want to hurl—”
Rat-a-tat-tat. Spitting words like a submachine gun, Yoo Jinchae recreated her ordeal with an expression somewhere between nausea and mockery.
So she was a comrade all along.
“And — and! When they threw me into that moldy, dust-choked place, I swear I was genuinely annoyed about why my profession isn't 'assassin'!”
“Would things have gone that differently if you were an assassin, Teacher?”
“……Possibly, a great deal.”
“What a shame.”
While calming Yoo Jinchae, who was spouting nonsense in her excitement, I looked ahead.
They're not coming out even with all this noise?
The corridor remained dead silent.
“Alright then, let's put our heads together on a good way to give these kidnappers the finger and escape this place safe and sound. While moving quickly, of course.”
Standing in the middle of the hallway and shouting was risky. Finding a place to hide, or better yet, moving around from spot to spot, seemed safer.
“Understood…. I have a feeling I'm going to regret this choice for the rest of my life, though.”
Yoo Jinchae agreed with a grim smile.
We moved fast, keeping watch ahead and behind. In the desolate corridor, only the sound of our two pairs of shoes echoed.
Extreme tension made our footsteps quicken on their own, an urgent edge creeping into every stride.
We were moving at near-sprint pace when, around the time we reached the middle of the corridor—
An emergency exit a short distance away burst open.
We both froze mid-step.
Beyond the open emergency exit was even darker than the corridor — there wasn't even a sensor light.
The moment I narrowed my eyes to assess the situation—
—Whoosh!
“……!”
Something shot out of the darkness.
Having suddenly closed in right before my eyes, it narrowed my vision to a point. A ball about the size of a small child's fist hung in the air for roughly five seconds before plummeting to the floor. It rolled and rolled and rolled… and came to a stop touching the toe of my shoe.
“God— who, who's there?”
A voice from the darkness asked. It was a young man's voice, like one that had only just finished cracking through puberty.
I bent down and picked up the thing touching my shoe. A hard texture, with stitching running down in two parallel lines…
When the sensor light blinked back on, I lifted it briefly and caught sight of a famous sports brand logo.
A baseball?
In the meantime, a silhouette buried in the darkness gradually walked out into the corridor. Beside me, Yoo Jinchae lowered her stance warily, but I, baseball in hand, just stared straight ahead in bewilderment.
“…….”
Blink, blink.
The sensor light flickered on above the head of the figure who had stepped fully into the corridor. At last taking in the person's appearance, Yoo Jinchae let out a hollow sound.
“……A high schooler?”
The person standing under the faint sensor glow was a man… no, a boy.
A male student who looked like he'd only just started high school.
He was about my height, but his face showed no trace of the world's wear. The boy in the black sports jersey stared at us with a flustered expression.
“…….”
A brief silence fell. I took my time looking him over from head to toe.
His bangs were quite long, and he wore small hoop earrings in both ears. Music leaked out of the earphones slung carelessly around his shoulders.
This kid… listens to K-pop.
It was a song by a boy group that had made a comeback with a fresh, summery concept just last week.
A baseball and K-pop…
Though he looks like a total delinquent.
That cognitive dissonance killed my wariness on the spot.
Yoo Jinchae sized him up and down as if gauging his combat ability, then slowly crossed her arms and asked.
Apparently, she'd judged him to be beneath her.
“You look like a high school student. How exactly did you end up in a place like this?”
At the question, the boy merely rolled his eyes, then pursed his lips and said,
“I took the bus.”
“…….”
Yoo Jinchae drew a long breath, as if dredging up her patience from the floor, and asked again.
“That's not what I asked. Why are you here? What's your reason for coming to this place?”
I tilted my head at the boy. Now that I looked, he didn't seem to recognize our faces at all…
Can he really not know who his own kidnappers grabbed?
Oh — don't tell me he's the one who commissioned the abduction? In that case, wouldn't we need to know about him in even more detail?
“Jae-hong hyung called me here, that's…. why. Oh, why? Why do you keep asking questions? Ajumma, do you know Jae-hong hyung?”
Following Yoo Jinchae's lead, the boy crossed his arms too. Look, kid, I get not wanting to back down…
I could see the fist beside Yoo Jinchae trembling. No evidence to back it up, but something told me you shouldn't mouth off to someone trained in close-quarters combat.
Hoping to defuse the mood, I held out the baseball to the boy and asked casually.
“Seeing our faces — anything come to mind?”
“……I, I threw the baseball because you startled me. Sorry about that, but you guys startled me too, so let's just call it even, yeah?”
The boy pocketed the baseball, lips pressed together, and answered.
He really doesn't know us, huh.
At that moment, my eyes met Yoo Jinchae's. The question 'What on earth is this kid?' was written all over her face.
I was about to open my mouth to dig for more information when the boy's next words stopped me short.
“So when's the summoning ritual? I need to get home fast. I skipped academy to sneak out today, and I have to be back home before school. Ugh, this is SO annoying. Seriously.”
Summoning ritual?
What kind of nonsense was this now?
For now, might as well nod along.
“Soon, probably. If you wait around… they'll do the summoning ritual. Did Jae-hong say anything about it?”
“Dunno. Phones don't work inside this building, and he just said he'd call me later and left.”
“Do you know where the others are right now? There are some things I want to ask, but I don't know where to find them.”
“They're in the basement, obviously. Everyone's gathering down there to summon the Demon Lord, or so they say. They haven't called me in yet because I'm not ready, so they told me to come in when—”
Demon? Summoning?
“……What in the actual hell is all this.”
Yoo Jinchae, listening beside me, finally blurted out what she was thinking. I felt exactly the same way.
To think there are actually people in this world who believe in this stuff.
I sighed deeply inside, but there was nothing to be done about it. This place lacked Abraham of the Iron Fist (that would be Kwon Haeseong's baptismal name).
With Abraham's faith and a warm, physical heart-to-heart, this kid would have converted to Catholicism with five minutes to spare.
As I was swallowing my regret, I suddenly felt a weight settle on my right shoulder and turned my head. Yoo Jinchae had placed her hand on my shoulder, her face grim with resolve, and whispered just loud enough for me alone.
“Let me handle the interrogation. I've interrogated civilians before. I remember it working quite well. I want to find out what this lunatic den even is, right now, and get out of here.”
I wholeheartedly agreed with that last part. But…
“Would this interrogation be conducted nonviolently and ethically?”
“……The circumstances back then, I'm afraid, didn't allow for that.”
Then that's a no. I gave a small shake of my head. Yoo Jinchae looked disappointed, her eyebrows drooping.
“Interrogation's a bit much, so let's just ask casually. Either way, we need to know what this place is before we can get out safely.”
Only then did Yoo Jinchae nod, her face brightening considerably.
“Ah, yes! In that case, I'll take the lead.”
Perhaps motivated at last, she turned her head, energy restored. I decided to trust her first.
Still…. where on earth does one get experience interrogating people?
“Listen up, student. I'm going to ask you a few questions, and I'd like you to answer them properly.”
“Why should I? By the way, you two aren't people from the 'Demon Lord's Exclusive Channel' cafe, are you? They said only cafe members were coming today, so how'd you get in? That's trespassing, you know.”
“……That's not the point. First off — what's a demon, what's a summoning ritual? And what's this building's address?”
“Why would I tell some strangers who aren't even cafe members, huh? Huh? You were about to hit me just now, weren't you? Your fist went up and then down and then up again?”
Yoo Jinchae seemed to have exhausted her entire reserves of patience after only two attempts at conversation. I sighed as I watched the boy raise his guard with both arms and taunt her in the most underhanded way possible.
He looks perfectly normal on the outside. Why is he like this?
I glanced, as subtly as I could, at the boy's legs. At some point, the leg he was leaning on had begun to tremble.
Ms. Jinchae is too furious to notice — it's gone all the way to the top of her head.
Besides the shaking legs, there were several other telltale behaviors. He kept glancing back over his shoulder, chewing on his lips, and trying to maintain a set distance from us…
Talking all big like that, and yet he's scared of us.
I spared one glance at Yoo Jinchae, on the verge of detonation, then spoke to the boy.
“Do you like demons?”
I threw out a hook based on his interests, and…
“It's not about liking them. It's about believing.”
The fish bit down hard. Right, of course he likes them. That's why he came scurrying out to this stinky, mystery building the moment some hyung he knew said he'd show him a demon.
“Would a demon do? If I showed you one, would you be willing to listen to everything I say from now on?”
“……And how exactly would you show me a demon, mister? Aaargh! Seriously! This is SO freaking annoying! Is it because you think I'm easy?!”
“Teacher Hwiyeon, surely you're not saying that, depending on how the students behave, our retreat instructor might become the demon, and all this shady business is—”
“No.”
I cut her off cleanly, exasperated by her worried words. Though she didn't look particularly convinced.
“So? Are you going to watch? Are you going to follow me?”
The boy scratched at his hair in irritation, then looked at me and snickered. A blatant sneer.
Still shaking in the legs, though.
Pick one. Just one.
Sneer, or be scared.
“Yeah, sure…. If you actually show me a demon, I'll follow you like one of your faithful! No wait, I'll be your dog! A dog!”
No need to go that far, but hey, works for me.
I motioned to the boy with one hand and turned away.
“Follow me. Ah — Teacher, please wait here a moment.”
“……Teacher.”
“It's really fine. He wants to see a demon, so I'll show him one. Quick and easy.”
Yoo Jinchae still seemed to believe that the "demon" I kept mentioning was discipline talk dressed up as a retreat instructor…
I led the boy far enough down the corridor that Yoo Jinchae could no longer see us. As it happened, there was a malfunctioning sensor light nearby, flicking on and off every five seconds.
The boy and I stood facing each other beneath it.
The sensor light went out.
When it flickered back on—
I called for Nabi.