The Breakup and the Confession
"Let's break up."
It was late in the evening, in a dark park deserted of people, that my girlfriend stood with her arms crossed and announced our breakup.
Her face, lit by the park's streetlamp, was beautiful enough that any man would have turned back to steal another look at least once.
Her jet-black hair fell smooth and untangled to her waist, and her flawless skin owed something to superior genetics, certainly, but her meticulous attention to her appearance had played its part as well.
She stood a little over the mid-170 centimeters — an ideal height for a woman — and the way her waist narrowed like a rigorously maintained model's left nothing to the imagination: there wasn't an ounce of excess flesh or fat anywhere beneath her clothes.
More than that, the plunging line of her peach-colored halter dress exposed her cleavage, subtly flaunting a chest of just the right size.
And beneath the hem of that dress, most of her plump thighs lay bare above pale-brown stockings, drawing my gaze there whether I wanted it or not.
This woman, who could have passed for a celebrity, was — incredibly — my girlfriend, Yoon Sung-ha.
The truth was, she was so far above me that I could never have bragged about dating her, and the gap between us was as impossible to bridge as the distance between heaven and earth.
She was a goddess of beauty, a stark contrast to my own appearance and body, both weathered and coarsened by hard work and labor, long past any hope of grooming.
Unlike me — a high school graduate who'd been thrown onto the job market early because of my family's circumstances — my girlfriend had graduated from a prestigious university, and her family background was as dazzling as mine was shabby.
People had always swarmed around her radiant presence, while my own social connections had withered away completely since I graduated high school.
Anyone could see, from these obvious facts alone, that I was hopelessly beneath her.
And yet, by sheer coincidence, she and I had met; I had fallen for her at first sight, confessed first, and clung on stubbornly until, like a miracle, we became a couple.
But even after we started dating, she rarely made time for me, always claiming to be busy — and when she did see me, it was almost always because she needed money.
For all that she'd been born into a well-off family, her parents were strict about allowances, so she was perpetually short on cash and borrowed from me every single time.
In nearly a year together, we hadn't had sex — hadn't even kissed, hadn't managed so much as proper skinship — and yet I still foolishly believed she liked me.
I knew this wasn't an ordinary relationship. I suspected I might be a sucker, a walking wallet. But whenever she showed me one of her rare bursts of aegyo, or flashed that thoughtful little smile of hers, I chose to believe.
Right up until a moment ago, that is — until she told me it was over.
"S-Sung-ha, why all of a sudden? Did I do something wrong?"
"You smell like cooking oil, so don't come any closer. My reason? I just got tired of you. That's all there is to it."
I spread my hands and stepped toward her in desperation, but she furrowed her brow, backed away, putting distance between us, and rejected me without a shred of mercy.
"No, wait, what do you—"
"I'm leaving. Don't look for me anymore. I won't answer your calls either."
I was struck speechless by a reason I couldn't accept — but she, indifferent to whether I spoke or not, turned without a moment's hesitation and began walking away from me.
"W-wait a second! Sung-ha!"
"Ugh, what?!"
Thwap.
When I grabbed her shoulder in desperation, she slapped my hand away in irritation, her brow knotted in a fury, exasperation and rage naked on her face.
"Oppa — no, wait — hey. Are you a moron or what?"
The first curse she'd ever directed at me rolled off her tongue as naturally as a habit.
"…What?"
"Haah… yeah, you really are a moron. Listen, idiot. Did you really need me to spell it out for you? You got strung along. I only saw you because I needed money, you goddamn idiot."
As she spat out the insults without restraint, laying bare what she'd thought of me all this time, my mind went white.
I stood there dazed for a moment while a year's worth of memories with the woman before me flashed rapidly through my head, and the strength drained out of my whole body.
Come to think of it… we really didn't have a single real memory together, did we…
Strangely enough, no anger boiled up inside me.
Some part of me had apparently already known that she treated me as a wallet and a garbage bin for her emotions.
There was lingering attachment, sure — but the moment the strength left my body, I found, surprisingly, that I could let go of everything, feelings included.
"Sung-ha… even so… I… I loved you. And I hope things go well for you from now on. Thank you for everything."
"What are you even saying, you idiot? Filming a melodrama all by yourself? You think if you talk like that, I'll come crawling back? What a pathetic loser… still groveling right to the end. Tch."
I'd forced a smile, trying to end things beautifully — and all I got back was a sneering, mocking laugh.
Unable to hold onto her any longer, I collapsed onto a park bench and could only stare blankly at her retreating figure as it vanished into the darkness.
"KYAAAAAAAAAK———!!!"
Then, barely a silhouette in the distance, she suddenly let out a scream.
"Sung-ha!"
Alarmed, I shot to my feet and rushed over — and a staggering sight spread out before me.
A mass of crimson flesh was clinging to her body.
Proving it was a living creature, slender tentacle-like things jutted out from the mass, coiling around her limbs and squeezing until her struggling stopped.
"Oppa! Oppa!! Help me!! What is this… mmph!"
Bound by the tentacles and collapsed on the ground, she stretched her hand toward me, begging for rescue — and then the mass of flesh shifted and sealed her mouth shut.
Glurp… glurp…
"Gghk!— gghk—!"
As the flesh covering her mouth slid down her throat and into her body, she let out a strangled, choking sound, her eyes rolling back, and her whole body began to shudder and convulse.
"Sung-ha!"
Without a second's delay, I charged at the fleshy mass clinging to her, desperate to tear it off.
"Get off her! Get off, damn you!!"
I forced all my strength into my arms and wrenched at it, but its suction was so powerful that it showed no sign of coming loose at all.
Sweat poured off my body like rain as I fought on, desperate — and then:
Wham!
"Gah!"
One of the tentacles lashed out from the mass like a whip and sent me sprawling helplessly across the ground.
The strike carried far more weight than it looked, and lying there, unable to move, I felt my consciousness fading fast.
"S-Sung…ha…!"
In my blurring vision, stretching my hand desperately toward her — toward the girl being swallowed whole by the mass of flesh — was all I could do before the darkness took me.
* * *
"…Ugh!"
As my heavy consciousness slowly recovered, a searing pain swept through my side, and I clutched at the spot the tentacle had struck.
I winced and endured the ache — and the moment everything that had just happened came rushing back, I scrambled to my feet, turning my head this way and that, searching for her.
"Sung-ha! Sung…ha…?"
Bathed in moonlight, a woman stood there, naked, bewitchingly still.
The face reflected in the darkness was unmistakably the same as the girlfriend I'd known — and yet, inexplicably, she felt like a completely different person.
Her alien bearing, too — the emotionless expression as she flexed and examined her own hands like someone seeing them for the first time — only cemented my suspicion.
I looked around. The mass of flesh from before was nowhere to be seen, but the drag marks scraped across the ground and my girlfriend's clothes strewn everywhere proved that that impossible scene had been no dream.
Gulp.
My throat bobbed once, hard.
It was unlikely Sung-ha had defeated that bizarre creature on her own.
Then… where had the monster gone?
Setting the creature's whereabouts aside for the moment, I began to walk slowly toward her, wanting to make sure she was safe.
"Sung…ha?"
Only at my cautious call did she finally turn her gaze from her own body and look at me.
And the instant our eyes met, something struck my mind like a bolt of lightning, and all at once, I understood.
"Eek!"
An inexplicable, primal terror flooded through me, and I fell backward onto the ground in spite of myself.
She looked down at me, her face unchanged, utterly expressionless.
"A human… I see. So you are… Hyun-ok. Yes. My boyfriend, Hyun-ok."
The way she spoke — like someone addressing a stranger for the first time — didn't sound like any attitude she'd take over a breakup.
"You… what… are you…?"
Scraping together what courage I could, I asked the thing that was unmistakably Sung-ha, and yet felt nothing like her.
"I am Yoon Sung-ha."
The flat, indifferent voice was Sung-ha's voice without question — but her manner and her expression were still stripped of any human feeling.
"…No, you're not."
"Why?"
"Y-your way of talking is different…"
"…What's wrong, Oppa? What's the matter with the way I talk?"
Suddenly she beamed at me and greeted me in her usual tone of voice.
But no matter how abruptly she switched back to sounding like herself, there was no way I could nod along.
"Judging by your face, you're not convinced. Well — you did watch the entire assimilation process, after all. I suppose I'll have to kill you."
Slide.
"Ah…"
As I watched the familiar tentacles emerge from her body, the thing I'd only half-understood finally took on a definite shape.
The being before me was no longer my girlfriend, Yoon Sung-ha. It was the flesh-monster, wearing her skin.
"Give her back!"
Sudden fury boiled up in me — and forgetting all fear, I found myself shouting.
"………?"
"I said give Sung-ha back!"
"……"
"I don't know what you are, but… b-but… S-Sung-ha didn't do anything wrong! So give her back — no — p-please…"
Only belatedly did I realize how absurd I sounded, shouting nonsense at the thing in front of me, and my voice dwindled to a crawl.
Compared to how boldly I'd begun, there was no denying how pathetic I looked.
She — no, the monster — stared down at me in silence for a long while. Then, slowly, she opened her mouth.
"How interesting. Hu— no… Hyun-ok. Weren't you cast aside by this human woman?"
"Wh-what does that…"
I had no idea how it knew my name, or how it knew about our relationship — but this was no time to worry about that.
The power over my life and death was held by the monster in front of me, and all I could do was answer its questions, helpless.
"Then why are you defending her?"
"Because… because…"
I don't know.
Why… did I shout like that?
Why… was I trying to save her, again?
"She was my girlfriend…"
I barely managed an answer I couldn't even convince myself of, but the monster seemed not to understand.
"I know little of humans, but do humans ordinarily rescue lovers who discarded them — lovers who used them, no less?"
"…I don't know. Why do you even care?"
Maybe it was because she wore Sung-ha's face. Because I was hearing Sung-ha's voice.
Talking with the monster, I found myself strangely, impossibly calm.
"How interesting, Hyun-ok. You…"
And then, for the first time, the monster smiled — and said something no member of the opposite sex had ever said to me in my entire life.
It was, of all things, a confession.