Begging for Mercy
The strength slowly drained from his body as it fought against death. It felt as if his consciousness was being dragged, inch by inch, into a distant darkness. Yet even as that happened, his daughter Heejin’s face grew sharper, more vivid. She was smiling. Clearly smiling. As though she had been waiting for this exact moment, as though it brought her immense delight.
Yongha shuddered and thrashed again, but every desperate movement only pulled the rope tighter around his throat. Hack… hack, hack… The choking sounds tore out of him on their own. He clawed at the rope with his nails, only gouging deeper wounds into his own flesh. Then his index fingernail snapped clean off with a sickening pop.
Aah. This was truly the end. He had reached the limit. As if she knew it too, Heejin’s gruesome smile deepened, stretching wider across her face. Yongha realized this was how he would die. The moment he gave up the fight and prepared to accept death—
—something flashed.
The rope was severed. Yongha dropped like a stone, collapsing onto the floor with a heavy thud. For a long time he lay there, coughing violently, each dry hack scraping his ruined throat raw. When he finally looked up, Heejin’s face had twisted into something hideous, a mask of bitter disappointment.
“Cough! Cough!”
Pain like breaking neck bones surged through him. His ragged breathing refused to settle; the violent coughing would not stop. His lungs expanded desperately, trying to gulp down every scrap of air they had been denied. Each breath sent white-hot agony lancing through his throat. Yongha drooled helplessly, the unending coughs only adding to his misery. Still, he had not died.
Thud.
Something landed on his head. Grimacing, he reached up and picked it up. It was the very rope that had been strangling him moments earlier. Had it simply snapped under his weight? That was what he thought at first, still coughing as he stared at it. Then he noticed the middle of the rope—cleanly sliced, as if by something razor-sharp.
It had been cut.
Flutter, flutter.
Something drifted down like a dead leaf, dancing before his eyes before settling on the floor. Yongha’s breath caught. It was the paper the young priest had given him. No—looking at it now, he understood it had never been ordinary paper. It was a talisman.
He clutched it tightly, fingers brushing the burning wounds on his neck. Only then did he realize he was lying on the living-room floor. This had not been a dream. The rope in his hand, the lacerations on his throat, the excruciating pain—every bit of it was real.
His gaze snapped toward Heejin’s room. The door stood slightly ajar. Through the narrow gap, two eyes watched him. A chill raced down his spine.
“Ah… aah…”
He tried to speak, but his ruined voice would not obey. Terror flooded in instead, vast and suffocating. He could not stay in this house a second longer. Staggering to his feet, falling, rising again, he fled outside as if the devil himself were at his heels.
The cold night air slammed into him. “Ugh…” A metallic groan escaped his damaged throat. The pain sharpened until he could barely move his head. He stumbled across the yard on unsteady legs before his knees finally gave out and he collapsed.
“Oof!”
Fresh pain bloomed. The coughing started again. Every hack felt like fire spreading from his neck through his entire body. When the fit finally eased, he looked back.
The living-room window. Heejin and Sunja stood there in the dark, staring at him with blank, unblinking eyes. Their expressions were filled with profound regret—as though they were disappointed he had not died.
Yongha’s whole body began to shake. These were not the wife and daughter he knew. They had become something else. Something demonic.
“Ugh… ughaa…”
Unable to even scream properly, he crawled on all fours like an animal, scrambling out of the yard and down the dark country road. He had no destination. He simply ran and ran, tears streaming down his face, searching for any place that might be safe from the horror behind him. He fell repeatedly, yet kept running until he reached a small, lit supermarket on the edge of the village.
A wooden bench sat out front. Yongha collapsed onto it, gasping, then curled into himself and wept for a long time.
He could not understand why this was happening to him. Accepting the reality of it felt impossible. If this was a nightmare, he prayed it would end soon. He remained hunched over, crying, until the worst of the storm inside him gradually subsided. His throat still burned and felt stiff, and a headache had begun to throb behind his eyes. Even enduring that pain was difficult.
What was he supposed to do now? Returning home terrified him, yet he had nowhere else to go. His gaze drifted toward the lighted interior of the neighborhood store. For a split second he thought he saw Heejin and flinched, but it was only an illusion. The owner was an old man in his seventies, dozing behind the counter. At this hour he could have closed up and gone to bed, yet the shop remained open.
Yongha tried to calm his pounding heart and looked up at the dark sky. That was when he noticed he was still clutching something. He opened his hand. The talisman. A small paper charm with a phone number written on it.
He stared at the numbers, dazed. Thirty minutes had passed. Or perhaps a little less. Yongha rose unsteadily, searched his pockets, and realized he had no phone. Sighing, he shuffled into the store like a zombie. The old owner did not stir. Yongha picked up the old landline receiver with trembling fingers and slowly dialed the number on the talisman.
The line rang. Then a calm voice answered.
The moment he heard the young priest’s voice, uncontrollable sobs burst out of Yongha. In a voice scraped raw, he managed to say:
Yongha had no choice but to return home. Fortunately the house was quiet. There was no sign of Sunja or Heejin. Everything looked exactly as it always had, as if the nightmare had been only a dream. But the rope lying in the middle of the living-room floor proved otherwise. It lay there as if mocking him. A fresh chill ran down his spine and the burning pain in his throat flared again.
Swallowing it down, he forced his trembling legs forward. Heejin’s door was still slightly open. This time, no eyes watched him from the darkness.
“Hoo…”
He took a deep breath and pushed his ruined voice out.
“Sunja…”
The young priest had told him to get out of the house if at all possible. That he would come soon, and Yongha should wait outside. When Yongha had asked about his wife, the priest had paused, then said that if possible he should bring Sunja out with him and hide together. Yes. For Sunja’s sake, he had to come back inside.
Long ago he had done terrible things to her. The guilt of it would not let him abandon her now.