The Bar (3)
"Hah... hah!"
Kim Ji-hye reached the entrance of the apartment building with her lungs tearing at the air. Sweat poured down her face like rain and clung, trembling, to the point of her chin.
She had made it as far as the front of the complex. Nothing dangerous ought to happen to her now. Her eyes flicked toward the security guard; as luck would have it, he was out patrolling the parking lot.
She still had no idea what was unfolding. What she did know was that she was safe.
She fought her breathing down and lifted the phone in a shaking hand, about to tap the contact saved under a single name.
The phone went off without warning.
She had been a breath away from calling him herself. She jammed the answer button.
"O-Oppa!"
"You fucking bitch—!!"
The roar nearly split her eardrum. Kim Ji-hye startled so hard she froze.
"What the hell kind of job did you do! It's all over the university community!!"
"Wh-what are you talking about? What do you mean, it's up...?"
"I told you to keep your friends on a leash! How the fuck did you handle this for it to blow up into this shitshow! Th-that bastard—who is he. Who!"
"W-wait, Oppa. I... I-I'm too shaken."
Kim Ji-hye hurried into the campus community. The post burning hottest in real time sat at the top of the board, and the titles in first and second place were identical.
She swallowed hard and opened the post.
Kim Ji-hye pressed play.
The camera looked out over a school rooftop. At the center of the frame stood her friend, finger joints bent at wild, unnatural angles and gone a bruised purple. Tears and snot streamed down her face; her hair was a frantic tangle, like someone who had lost her mind. She stared into the lens with eyes brimming with terror.
A voice crawled up the spine and lifted every hair along it. The friend in the footage and Kim Ji-hye flinched as one.
Through trembling lips, the friend forced out a voice that seemed to crawl.
She sniffled, lips shivering.
The friend snatched a thick wad of cash from a shopping bag set beside her and thrust it at the camera.
Her friend's shoulders heaved.
At the question, the friend shook as if in a fit and screamed.
The one behind the camera closed in. A hand seized her friend by the hair and started walking her toward the railing.
The hand let go.
Her friend's scream thinned as she dropped away.
A wet, splitting crack.
She hit with her skull broken open, body seizing.
The image snapped off. The video was over.
Face slack with disbelief, Kim Ji-hye opened the second post. The other friend confessed her sins the same way, and fell from the rooftop.
When the footage ended, the screen went black—and in that blackness, Kim Ji-hye's bloodless face stared back at her.
"Wh-what...? I-is this real?"
"Goddamn it, what the hell is going on! Wh-what is that bastard. You got any guess who? Huh!?"
"A-a-aaaaagh!"
Sobbing, Kim Ji-hye bolted into the building.
If both her friends had been taken, she was next. She was certain of it.
She had to get home. She had to hide somewhere safe. She flew up the stairs in a frenzy; some ill feeling told her that if she stepped into the elevator, the killer would have her there.
She reached the seventh floor—her own floor—at a speed she could hardly believe, and stabbed at the door code. Her fingers were slick with sweat and shaking so badly the buttons wouldn't take.
"Please, please, please...!"
A bright chime announced the lock's release, and she stumbled inside. Finding the studio empty, she snatched up her phone at once.
"Hey! What happened! Answer me! Did that bastard come for you!? Kim Ji—"
Click.
Kim Ji-hye killed the call and hit 112.
The tone pulsed—once, twice, three times—then clicked through.
"Yes, police."
"S-save me! Someone is—"
Kim Ji-hye could not go on.
A cold red light had fallen across her face.
Her pupils shuddered. She barely managed to work her trembling jaw.
"H-how... I-I'm sure n-nobody was... there..."
She understood, in her gut, that the thing standing before her was not human. From its single eye an ominous crimson poured without end, and the black bandages wound about its whole body breathed out a malignant air.
It was the feeling of coming face to face with something one must never meet. She had become a pitiful prey animal, standing before a predator.
"Hello? Hello? Miss?"
It extended a sharp hand, slowly, and took her phone.
"Are you al—"
Click.
The call died.
It stared straight through Kim Ji-hye.
The gaze felt somehow familiar. Kim Ji-hye began to sob.
Name:Kim Ji-hye
Sex:Female
Age:20
Threat Level:Low
Criminal Record
— Arranging prostitution
— Indirect homicide through false information
— Bribery
Han Yuhyeon began to work Kim Ji-hye's phone. Instinct told her at once what he meant to do—film her, just as he had filmed her friends.
Legs eaten through with fear twitched.
Her eyes wheeled wildly in every direction.
They stopped on the luxury shopping bags.
"Aaaagh!!"
Kim Ji-hye let out a scream like an animal and hurled a shopping bag at its face. Then she hauled her rigid legs up by force and burst out the door.
Left behind in the room, the crimson gleam of its eyes flashed.
"Hah, hah, hah! Somebody, s-save—me...!"
Her voice would not come out right. Even so, Kim Ji-hye kept crying out, little more than a whisper.
"S-somebody, please, s-save me!"
Her legs tore down the stairs, nearly leaping them.
Breath climbed to the back of her throat and her mind began to swim, but she did not stop. Now and then she whipped around as if in a spasm to see whether it was following—yet there was no shadow, not even a trace of red light.
On the verge of blacking out, Kim Ji-hye's gaze locked onto the marker for the first floor.
"Hahh—hahh—s-somebody..."
A cheerful chime rang beside her.
Sudden brightness poured down over her head.
Her eyes were on the elevator, its doors standing wide.
Inside, it was filming her with her own phone—and staring.
"Eeeek! G-get away! Get the fuck away from me!!"
Kim Ji-hye charged back up the stairs in a frenzy. She took them two at a time until her thighs felt ready to split, but she had no room to climb them one by one.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
This time was different. The monster was coming up behind her.
The ghastly red light pouring off it flooded the steps beneath her feet.
"Hah, hah, hah! S-save me, save..."
She was wringing out every scrap of strength she had left just to climb, and her voice only grew weaker for it.
Little by little, Kim Ji-hye slowed. She never exercised. Her body had already reached its limit.
"I... I don't w-want to die..."
Even so, she kept going, crawling more than climbing.
At last she was back on the seventh floor, where her apartment waited. Hope flared, and she made to duck straight into the corridor—
—when a mad rush of footsteps hammered up behind her. She flinched and climbed again.
Salt crusted her skin. Her vision smeared.
"P-please..."
She no longer knew how far she had climbed. More than once her strength failed and she sank where she stood.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The footsteps at her back dragged her unmoving legs up again by force.
It hurts enough to die.
I want to run.
But I can't.
Great tears poured from her eyes like a waterfall.
Then a thought cut across her mind.
Her pace up the stairs had clearly collapsed. She was all but walking now.
So why wasn't it taking her, when it could have caught her whenever it pleased?
It only seemed to break into a sprint when she tried to beg help at someone else's door.
"...No way."
Kim Ji-hye understood.
It was toying with her.
Until she reached the rooftop.