Chapter 9: The Severed Thread
Kwang!
Jihun's savage, destructive kick ripped the flimsy wooden door of room 302 clean off its hinges with a pitiful screech. The hinges tore free from the frame, scraping across the floor in a shrill metallic screech that shredded the silence of the hallway. His hand, gripping the heavy professional tripod like a weapon, trembled with rage, terror, and an indescribable exhaustion.
The stench that greeted Jihun as he burst into the room was so foul it was hard to believe any human could live there. The cramped goshiwon room, unventilated for months, assaulted his lungs with a rancid mix of moldy rot, sour body odor, and the acrid haze of cheap cigarettes.
"Siyeon! Park Siyeon! Where are you? Answer me, please!"
Jihun roared like a beast, frantically tearing through the narrow, filthy space. Rotten cup ramen containers teetered precariously on the desk and spilled onto the floor, soaking his shoes in unidentified liquids. But Siyeon wasn't there. Only a dual monitor setup glowing eerily under harsh white light, plastered with thousands of her photos, and piles of trash the culprit had apparently dropped in his hasty escape. Next to the monitor sat something that stopped Jihun's heart cold: a faded pink hair tie—the very one Siyeon had been using the day she was trapped in the smartphone. It was like a cruel sneer left for him, a declaration of victory.
"Aaaargh! You fucking bastard! Where'd you take my wife? Show yourself! I'll kill you!"
Jihun clutched the hair tie and thrashed on the floor, screaming. He swung the tripod and smashed the monitors to pieces, but the fire in his chest wouldn't die. This was the exact spot where, just moments ago in the live stream, his wife's screams had echoed. The bedsheet still held the faint, lingering warmth of the culprit's body. That sickening heat, hot enough to burn if he touched it, was irrefutable proof that the beast who had stolen his wife had been violating her right here, mere seconds ago. The culprit had vanished like smoke through the emergency stairs while Jihun was panting up the main staircase.
With shaking hands, Jihun snatched the culprit's laptop from the floor—the last link to his wife, the only window into her survival and suffering, a gateway to the cloud account. But the screen displayed a cold system message sealing his despair.
Warning: This account has been permanently blocked from all access by the owner (Author).
Message: 'The free show for spectators is over. From now on, it's intimate time for paying readers only. Welcome to hell, incompetent husband.'
"No... no, please! Siyeon! No!"
Despite Jihun's desperate screams, the final window into his wife's torment went dark. Even though Siyeon existed somewhere in the physical world, to Jihun, she was now eternally erased. What drove him mad wasn't the sorrow of losing her—it was the cruel imagination that forced him to picture her trapped in that monster's pocket, enduring unimaginable humiliations in the unseen darkness. It gnawed at his soul millimeter by millimeter. Jihun slammed his head against the wall, torturing himself. The helplessness of failing to protect her sliced his heart like a blade.
At the same time, far from Sinseoldong Station in a remote, rundown basement studio on the outskirts, Jin-seok slipped inside. The mold-blossomed wallpaper and damp floor greeted him, but he flashed a relieved, maniacal grin. Panting heavily, he yanked the scorching smartphone from his pants pocket and tossed it onto the bed. Inside the screen, Siyeon lay collapsed on the floor, sobbing after exhausting herself calling her husband's name. Her eyes stared blankly into the void, her consciousness adrift on the blurred boundary between virtual and real.
"Jihun... Mr. Jihun was here, right? I heard the door... It was definitely him... Why didn't you take me? I'm right here... Right here..."
Jin-seok opened the Author's Note window and poured in the cruelest commands, like dumping ice water over her face. He resolved to shatter the fortress of her 'memories'—the foundation of her psyche. A person's self is built on memories, after all. By erasing them, he would turn Siyeon into a perfect 'data doll'.
Setting: Apply noise processing to 'Jihun's face' data in character 'Park Siyeon''s memory storage.
Additional Setting: Whenever the target tries to recall her husband, release intense electrical current through the neural system, inducing severe migraines.
Status: Memories of love converted to pain triggers. Ego collapse accelerating. Link to reality severed.
"Aaah! Aaaagh! My head... My head hurts so much! Oppa... Mr. Jihun... Your face... Why can't I see it...!"
Siyeon clutched her head and writhed on the narrow screen floor, screaming. Her most precious memory—the single map that had sustained her life—dissolved into digital fog, corrupted beyond recognition. Jihun's gentle smile, his face in their wedding photos, all those cherished fragments twisted into black noise and ripping agony. Jin-seok savored her torment through the lens, then whispered into the phone mic, his voice slithering into her ears like poison.
"Don't call that bastard's name anymore. Every time you do, your brain'll fry. He can't find you. Hell, he's probably ditched you by now. You saw it, right? Heard your screams and still couldn't find you—yelling at shadows like an idiot. What man would take back a used-up slut like you, remodeled into this? You're mine now, Siyeon. I'm your world's one and only creator and master."
The last flicker of hope in Siyeon's eyes died silently. The more she couldn't recall Jihun's face, the weaker her instinctive resistance grew, and in its place, Jin-seok's insidious, humiliating commands spread like venom. Her nervous system was being rewired to obey his every word before shame could even register. What remained of Park Siyeon as a human was a faint afterimage, now overlaid with the settings of character 'Siyeon'—Jin-seok's creation under his pen name Ma Gangdu.
Jin-seok propped the phone against the bedhead at an angle, setting up for a full 'indoor serialization.' He was done treating her as a mere novel character; now, he'd perfect her as a 'living custom job' to sate his pathetic real-world lusts. The flickering old bulb in the basement room cast a sickly yellow glow over Siyeon's humiliating, convulsing pose on the floor.
"Alright, time for the real erotic tale series. Readers are gonna lose their minds."
Jin-seok's fingers reached for the screen again, while Jihun, in the empty goshiwon room, bit down on his wife's hair tie and howled like a beast. The address he'd raced to save her held only the hair tie and the culprit's vile mockery. Jihun's wails echoed hollowly off the cold concrete walls, and in Siyeon's mind, Jihun sank slowly into the data abyss, plummeting into the depths.
The night deepened, but the two men's madness didn't stop. One clutched shattered pieces and wept, transforming into an avatar of vengeance. The other toyed with that broken soul, penning the devil's tale. And between them, Siyeon lost the traces of her humanity one by one, sinking into eternal darkness. To her now, Jihun was no longer her beloved husband—but a 'symbol of pain' that shattered her skull just to think of.
Jin-seok opened his laptop to Siyeon's screams as background music and posted a short notice on the donation board.
Jihun's phone buzzed. An anonymous message: a tiny thumbnail of Siyeon being violated, the start of yet another despair. Wiping bloodshot tears, Jihun stood. Now, he'd hunt the bastard not by law and order, but by blood and revenge. The severed thread would reconnect—but as a garrote that ended only in mutual death.