Prey
I was born into money. People call it being born with a gold spoon in your mouth, but gold wouldn't have covered it — mine would have been a platinum spoon. The mansion I grew up in had more servants than family members, that's how much wealth we were talking about.
Our family owned a private educational foundation: two high schools and a middle school, along with major general hospitals in both Seoul and Yongin. I attended the middle school under the foundation, and my older sister went to its affiliated arts high school.
She reigned as the undisputed queen of her school, untouchable by anyone. She was pretty, and she did well in her studies, too. Piano was her major, though as far as I remember she never had any particular talent for it. Maybe school life bored her, because she took to tormenting her classmates — and there was one girl who stuck in my memory more than anyone else.
"Hey, Choi Jian. Didn't I tell you to keep my chest pads pressed and carried around for me?"
"Ah... I'm sorry. I overslept yesterday because of practice... I'm sorry, Wonyoung."
My sister absolutely despised her classmate Choi Jian. I didn't know why at first. I used to watch her from a distance — no, wait, that's not right. Anyway, back when I was still at Eunsung Middle School, there was a day when Jian, her face beaten black and blue, came looking for me in my classroom carrying my gym uniform.
"Seongjun... this is yours. Your noona asked me to bring it to you...."
"....."
Jian had such large breasts. Her face was beautiful enough that she could have debuted as an idol center on the spot. I'd heard she was calm and gentle by nature, and that she had extraordinary talent at the piano.
"Th-thanks...."
Thanking a girl who was being used as a shuttle felt absurd, but I wanted desperately to say something — anything — to her. But Jian handed over the gym uniform and bolted, just like that. That night, I threw a fit at my own sister.
"Hey, stop bullying your friend. Are you insane?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Jian. Tell her to stop! Leave her alone!"
"Fuck — how do you even know that bitch's name?"
My sister doted on me abnormally. Ever since we were little there'd been the constant skinship — she fussed over everything down to watching me eat. Grabbing and squeezing my butt, kissing my cheek — it was routine. I grew up thinking that was just what siblings did, until I brought it up with a friend who had an older sister. The look of disgust that friend gave me is something I still can't forget.
"That girl has dirty blood."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"An orphan, playing piano like she belongs? Crazy bitch... nothing going for her but those massive tits...."
"What is that even supposed to mean..."
My sister had an extreme chosen-people mentality. To someone like her, Jian was nothing more than convenient prey — a vermin to be exterminated. I saw her tormenting Jian now and then, and each time it was so savage it felt like watching a psychological horror film.
"Quit butting in where it doesn't concern you and focus on your studies. You're going to med school, remember? You have to become the director of our Eunsung Medical Center."
Every time, I tried to reason with her, even begged her — but all I got back was a hand on my crotch, some twisted skinship, and the same refrain: become a doctor.
In the end, the year I entered my second year of middle school, Jian dropped out of school. Unable to do anything, I could only bury myself in my studies exactly as my parents commanded and my sister demanded. I made it into medical school that way — but a hole had been punched somewhere in my heart, and it never stopped feeling hollow.
Beeeep— beeeep—
In front of the main gate of the Marine Corps 1st Division HQ, a British-made black sedan was blaring its horn.
"Ugh... so embarrassing, seriously...."
With his red name tag pinned to his chest and his signature high-and-tight assault cut, Seongjun chewed his gum lazily as he passed through the guard post.
"Seongjun!"
Far off, his sister had stepped out of the car and was waving. He'd been planning to grab a few drinks in downtown Pohang with the squadmates discharging alongside him, but Seongjun scowled and said his goodbyes.
"Whoa... is that your actual sister?"
"Whatever. Let's meet up some other time. I'm off."
Scowl deepening, Seongjun climbed into the back seat. He'd told her flat out not to come — yet she'd insisted on dragging the driver along all the way to Pohang.
"I told you not to come."
"My beloved little brother is being discharged today. How could I possibly stay away?"
"Ugh — seriously, enough with the 'I love you' crap. Are you deranged?"
The moment she graduated from college, my sister had been appointed chairwoman of the Eunsung Arts Center. She'd long since given up the piano she could barely play, but apparently she'd never let go of her longing for the arts itself.
"My little brother got even more handsome after his service, huh?"
"Spare me the bullshit and sit over there."
Strangely enough, Seongjun's rebellious streak had worsened after he got into medical school. To be fair, he was only a first-year then, so calling it rebellion — drinking himself stupid every day and punching his membership card at every club in town — was generous. But he figured that getting into med school had squared his debt to the family, more or less, so he spent an entire year playing around and then enlisted.
"Time to stop fooling around and go back to school, don't you think?"
"God, fuck — get away from me!"
His sister wrapped her arms around his and cooed at him in that sickeningly sweet voice. Objectively speaking, it was true that a woman like Lee Wonyoung would turn heads anywhere — flawless face, a figure that was downright sinful. And for someone still so young, she groomed and adorned herself obsessively; she practically floated above the ground as she walked.
"Ahh... you know what, Seongjun? You're the sexiest when you're cursing me out."
"What did you say?"
"Go on, curse at me. Hmm? Curse at me again."
"Wow.... fuck. You're like a literal psychopath."
Seongjun was suddenly conscious of the driver gripping the wheel up front, and his ears burned scarlet. Unable to bear it a second longer, he ordered the car stopped at the intercity bus terminal.
"Why aren't you riding the rest of the way?"
"You can ride it alone."
"Then come straight to Bangbae-dong. Got it?"
"Whatever. Tell Dad I'll be home in a few days after having some fun."
It didn't fully make sense to him either, but their parents were neglectful to an almost pathological degree. They'd suggested medical school, sure — but a suggestion was all it ever was, never an order. In their place, his sister threw herself into everything with ferocious intensity, like a parent or a lover. So that's why Mom and Dad left me to her, Seongjun thought.
The moment he reached Seoul, Seongjun headed straight for Sinsa-dong and made his way to a select shop he knew well. Restored to his own style from before his enlistment, he grabbed a quick meal near Garosu-gil. Watching the busty women stroll past, it finally sank in that he was really discharged.
"Whoa, you got out?"
"Yeah. How's the scene here these days?"
"Heh heh heh... can't tell a gunbari what's what, but this is the best hunting ground in Seoul, you idiot."
Seongjun headed for the lounge bar where his friend worked on staff. Tonight he intended to drink until the sun came up.
"Hold up — you're going in like that?"
"Why?"
His friend blocked his way, staring at Seongjun's assault cut, then promptly stepped aside.
"Well, I mean, fuck it.... even with that haircut you're still stupid-hot, so whatever."
"Talking more nonsense again."
They started with cocktails and graduated to tequila, then vodka. Pulsing rave music thundered from the stage, and Seongjun, feeling gloriously unburdened, let his body ride the rhythm. Within minutes he'd drawn every woman's eye in the lounge — hot gazes everywhere he turned, one woman flirting outright, offering him a drink.
"Hey, oppa... want to come have a drink at my table?"
"No."
Women with pretty legs, women with sharp, striking faces — none of them were really his type. They all looked stamped from the same mold, interchangeable. All the way through high school and into university, there had only ever been one person who surfaced in his mind.
Choi. Ji. An.
He still remembered her name without trying. The woman his own sister had tormented viciously. Called a vermin, told she stank, forbidden from even being looked at. Whenever the alcohol spread through him and some strange craving rose in his chest, her name appeared, without fail.
"I wonder how she's doing."
One day, with barely half a semester of high school behind her, she'd left. It was the end of summer break in his second year of middle school, wasn't it? When Seongjun found out, he felt hollow, as if a treasure he'd guarded for years had been stolen from under him.
He'd never even managed a single word with her.
He resented himself, pointlessly, for not having been bolder in standing up to his sister. If those deep wounds of hers had healed even a little, he'd wanted to see her once — even from far, far away.
"Where you going, man?"
"Smoking."
"Light up here."
"Can't breathe in there. I'll go suck one down and be back."
The moment Seongjun rose from the table, a half-drunk woman latched onto him.
"Oppa, want to go buy ice cream with me?"
"No thanks. Go eat it yourself."
"Aww, don't be like that, 'kay?"
"Get lost."
It drove him crazy — why did women who held zero interest for him keep throwing themselves at him like this?
BLEEEGH!
That last cocktail mixed on top of everything else must have been the culprit — the moment he pulled deep on his cigarette, Seongjun started retching. He'd turned into the dark alley behind the club, and now he heaved up everything inside him. A while later, his head cleared, and he lit another cigarette. That was when, from the direction where the convenience store lights wobbled and blurred, a heavy voice called out.
"Lee Seongjun?"
"What?"
Someone had spoken his name. Looking closer, it wasn't just one or two of them. Five or six thick-necked brutes had encircled him in an instant.
"Graduate of Eunsung High School, second-year med student at Y University — that you, Lee Seongjun?"
A man whose sheer bulk had nothing to do with schools or medicine was rattling off his personal information like a shopping list.
"Fuck... who the hell are you guys?"
Finally, the man with the bushy beard pulled up a photo on his phone, held it up to Seongjun's face at different angles, then gave the signal.
"It's him. Lee Seongjun."
"What?"
The next moment — a heavy WHAM — and Seongjun's body was flying backward.
Fuck.... I've been out of the service for one day and what the hell is th—
How much time passed with the world tipping backward around him? At the sound of voices muttering somewhere close, Seongjun forced his eyelids open.
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