Kim Jeong-sik
NAME:Kim Jeong-sik
GENDER:Male
AGE:48
THREAT LEVEL:Low
CRIMINAL RECORD:Rape, Corpse Abandonment, Murder (4 Years Imprisonment), Assault, Extortion
The crimson beam flaring from the single-eyed helmet cut through the dark. Its gaze locked back onto Kim Jeong-sik.
“H-heeurgh... Aaaagh!”
Kim Jeong-sik was crawling across the filthy pavement on all fours, scrambling for his life.
What the hell is that thing? What in the world is that?!
It was not human. Anyone could tell that at a single glance. This was far beyond mistaking a ghost for a living person in the dead of night. The moment Kim Jeong-sik laid eyes upon it, he knew: this was no human being, but an abominable monster wearing a person’s silhouette.
He had to run. While that thing was momentarily standing still, he had to get out of this alleyway immediately.
Blood dribbled from his split lips as he dragged himself forward in a clumsy, desperate crawl. He wanted nothing more than to leap to his feet and sprint, but the sheer shock from the blow earlier had frozen his legs numb. They refused to obey.
Thud. Thud.
“H-hiieek!”
Terror seized him at the sound of deliberate footsteps drawing near from behind. With trembling, scraped fingers, he frantically tapped the screen of the smartphone that had still been recording video.
He swiped into the phone app and mashed the keypad:
“One-one-two, is it?”
At Han Yuhyeon’s chilling voice, Kim Jeong-sik’s finger froze mid-air, trembling violently.
How could that possibly be a human voice?
It sounded as though an indescribable, grotesque horror were mimicking human language, its words carrying a hollow, unnatural echo that curdled the blood.
Han Yuhyeon’s clawed hand moved smoothly, plucking the phone from Kim Jeong-sik’s paralyzed grip.
“Begging for your life from the very police who ought to throw you in chains?”
Kim Jeong-sik spun around in a spastic frenzy and shrieked at the top of his lungs.
“Aaargh! What... what the hell are you?! Why the fuck are you doing this to me?!”
Han Yuhyeon answered with a kick straight into his bloated gut.
“Kuh-urk—!”
Kim Jeong-sik’s heavy frame lifted clean off the ground before crashing hard and tumbling across the asphalt.
He clutched his stomach, curling into a tight ball. A searing, white-hot heat spread outward from where the strike had landed, accompanied by a nauseating certainty that something inside him had ruptured.
Han Yuhyeon crouched before him, seized a fistful of his thinning hair, and yanked his head back.
“Kim Jeong-sik.”
“H-how... how do you know my name...?”
“Your criminal record lists rape, corpse abandonment, murder, assault, and extortion. Am I correct?”
A piercing chill ran down Kim Jeong-sik’s spine. It felt as though he were staring into the eyes of an all-seeing shaman. Every single atrocity he had ever committed was being rattled off without missing a detail, sending cold goosebumps rippling across his flesh.
“I... I...”
“So it is true. And the only crime you actually served time for was murdering Han Mina?”
His heart plummeted into an icy abyss. Kim Jeong-sik gulped down a mouthful of blood and spit.
This monster saw straight through him. In truth, he had committed every single act Yuhyeon had spoken aloud.
In the dead of night, he had raped a woman walking home late down a secluded alley, recorded the entire assault on his phone, and threatened to leak the footage online if she ever went to the authorities. He had escaped punishment entirely.
While roaming the streets drunk, he had repeatedly kicked and beaten an elderly woman collecting scrap cardboard. Fortunately for him, she had never filed a report, so the police never came knocking.
And killing someone with his truck? Han Mina had not been his first.
On a deserted road, he had slammed his truck into a solidly built man. When he climbed down from the cab, he found the man still clinging to life. Though his limbs were twisted backward at grotesque angles and bloody foam bubbled from his mouth, he was still breathing. With desperate eyes, the man had pleaded silently for salvation. Yet Kim Jeong-sik had never called for an ambulance.
'If he ends up in the hospital, I’ll be on the hook for all the medical bills, won't I?'
Instead, he checked his surroundings, confirmed there were no surveillance cameras in the area, put the truck in reverse, and backed over the man to finish the job cleanly. Afterward, he hastily tidied up the scene and dumped the body into the nearby reservoir. A month later, news broke that a corpse had been discovered, but the police never even placed him on their list of suspects.
He had gotten away with all of it. He had walked away scot-free, continuing to live his comfortable, filthy life.
So how? How could this monster possibly know any of that?
He shook his head violently in desperate denial.
“N-no! That wasn't me! Do you have any proof I did that? Even the police never came looking for me, so who the fuck are you to claim I committed those crimes?!”
Kim Jeong-sik’s body lifted off the ground once more. Han Yuhyeon hoisted him into the air by his hair, drew back his other fist—
And drove it forward.
Crack! Crunch! Smash!
The barrage showed no sign of stopping. His fists hammered into Kim Jeong-sik’s face, crushing bone, swelling his eyes shut, battering him mercilessly. Han Yuhyeon could feel the terrifying power surging through his transformed body—a single unbridled punch could easily obliterate the man's head into red mist—yet he held back. Instead, he carefully measured his strength, ensuring his prey would not die as he systematically beat him to a pulp.
He was not a first-time offender.
Murder had not been a first-time accident either.
He had submitted letters of remorse to the judge, yet here he was, committing vile crimes all over again.
Even after crushing his sister to death, shameless to the very end.
Inside Yuhyeon, there was no boiling rage. Rather, a glacial tempest of cold, calcified fury whistled through his veins.
“P-please... stop... I-I was wrong... I'm sorry...”
Kim Jeong-sik sobbed through a face unrecognizable beneath a mask of blood and bruises. At those whimpering words, Han Yuhyeon’s fist halted an inch from his nose.
Curled into a trembling heap like a battered cur, Kim Jeong-sik shrank back into himself. Watching him cower, Han Yuhyeon tilted his head.
“Wrong? Didn't you claim just moments ago that you never committed any crimes?”
“N-no, I did! I did it all! I'm sorry... I'm so sorry! I'll never do it again! Please, just let me live! It hurts... it hurts so bad! P-please send me to a hospital...”
“Heh.”
A hollow, mocking chuckle slipped from Han Yuhyeon.
A murderer who had deliberately snuffed out lives he could have saved—denying them a hospital—now groveling on his knees to be sent to one.
“Do you want to live?”
“Yes! Yes! I want to live! Please, mister, I'm begging you! If you just let me live, I'll turn over a new leaf! I'll do charity work, I'll live with a good heart and be kind to everyone!”
A spark of desperate hope flared in Kim Jeong-sik’s eyes, as though he genuinely believed this slender thread of survival was not a rotting rope about to snap.
“Then return what you stole.”
“Huh...? Ah! Ahhh! I understand what you mean! I get it! C-could you let go of me for just a second?”
Han Yuhyeon released him without resistance. Limping heavily, Kim Jeong-sik dragged himself toward the woman he had just been attempting to violate. Still reeling from the sudden eruption of nightmarish violence, she sat paralyzed on the ground.
When her wide, terrified eyes caught sight of Kim Jeong-sik shuffling toward her, she panicked, struggling frantically to get to her feet. But her trembling legs gave out beneath her, refusing to move.
“S-stay back! Get away! Get away from me! Don't come any closer!”
She screamed in a tearful voice, hastily scrambling to pull out her phone.
“W-wait, hold on! I'm not gonna hurt you! Just wait! I only want to apologize!”
“What...?”
Baffled by the sheer absurdity, she froze. Kim Jeong-sik stretched his swollen mouth into a grotesque, gum-baring grin and slammed his forehead onto the pavement.
“I-I'm sorry for giving you such awful trauma! It was only because you were so pretty! I'm begging you like this... please, just forgive me!”
“You... what kind of insane bullshit is that? Why on earth should I forgive you?”
Thud. Thud.
Kim Jeong-sik’s ears twitched. With every heavy step Han Yuhyeon took from behind, it felt as though an icy dagger were being driven deeper into his chest.
“I'm begging you! Please save my life! Please! I'll do whatever you want! Letters of apology, money, anything—just forgive me!”
He shrieked in sheer, pitiful desperation.
Yet the woman was no longer looking at him. Her gaze had drifted past his groveling form, fixed in dread upon the towering figure of Han Yuhyeon, whose cyclopean helm radiated a sinister crimson light.
Realizing where her eyes were, Kim Jeong-sik began shaking uncontrollably. Cold sweat pouring down his face, he roared at the woman:
“You fucking bitch! Is saying 'I forgive you' really that goddamn hard?! You're killing me! You're the one murdering me right now!!”
Han Yuhyeon closed a single hand around Kim Jeong-sik’s throat and hoisted him into the air.
“Ke-heck! S-spare me... I... I tried...!”
“I wondered what you were doing, only to find you pulling the exact kind of trash stunt befitting your kind. If you want to live, bring back the people you murdered.”
“H-how the hell am I supposed to... do that?! Ke-heck!”
“Is that so?”
Han Yuhyeon drew his arm all the way back—
And with his crimson eye flaring in the dark, slammed him against the brick wall.
CRASH!
Kim Jeong-sik ricocheted off the bricks with a thunderous impact and crumpled onto the asphalt.
“A-ah...!”
The shock was so immense his mind could barely process it; he could not even squeeze out a proper scream. His limbs shuddered uncontrollably, shaking like aspen leaves in a gale.
“S-sp... spare...”
He pleaded with his eyes toward the woman he had tried to violate, silently begging for help. Quietly, the woman slid the phone she had been clutching back into her coat pocket.
A shadow fell over him.
A chilling crimson light bathed his vision. His trembling eyes met the ghastly beam radiating from the helmet.
Han Yuhyeon crouched down, meeting Kim Jeong-sik eye to eye.
“I will give you a way to live.”
Kim Jeong-sik's eyes widened in shock.
Hope flared once again within him. Han Yuhyeon worked the phone he had seized from the man and pressed the video record button.
“Confess your crimes.”
Spilling everything meant heading straight back to prison, but prison was a hundred times better than dying here.
Kim Jeong-sik parted his bloodied lips.
“I... I raped a woman, and I hit a man with my truck, put it in reverse to kill him, and dumped his corpse in a reservoir. A-and I beat an old woman who was picking up scrap paper on the street. Not only that, but I... I caused the death of Miss Han Mina by driving drunk...”
Mid-sentence, a suffocating, bloodthirsty aura bore down onto Kim Jeong-sik’s shoulders like a mountain.
“Murdered.”
“What?! A-ah! I murdered Miss Han Mina! And without showing a shred of remorse, today I tried to violate another woman...!”
Han Yuhyeon nodded.
“And will you live reflecting upon your sins from now on?”
“Y-yes! Absolutely! I will never do bad things again! I'll pay for my sins in full and start fresh! I'll always show kindness and share what I have with others!”
Kim Jeong-sik felt the radiant glow of hope burning brighter by the second.
Han Yuhyeon nodded once more.
“T-then... does that mean you're going to spare me?”
“No. You must face your final punishment first. Exactly as your victims did.”
“W-what?”
Han Yuhyeon grabbed him by the collar and dragged him forward.
“You took something precious from me. But you can never return it, can you? So isn't it only right that you suffer the exact same pain in return? Did you honestly believe I'd let you walk away with smiles and laughter after doing just this?”
The solitary crimson beam pierced the darkness, bathing Kim Jeong-sik’s trembling form.
“From this moment on, I will return every single thing you did to your victims back upon you in full. If you survive the ordeal, I will harm you no further. Do you agree?”
Realizing he had no choice whatsoever, Kim Jeong-sik swallowed his tears and nodded.
“I-I agree...”
“Then first.”
Han Yuhyeon kicked Kim Jeong-sik straight between the legs.