I Don't Know
"…I don't know."
After a moment's hesitation, the monster spoke quietly.
When I looked at it in puzzlement at the unexpected answer, the monster lowered its gaze and went on in an even tone.
"I opened my eyes to this world for the first time with no memory at all. It was a damp, dark basement. Back then I was tiny, and I didn't have the intelligence I have now. But one instinct was certain—that I had to survive—and following it, I parasitized the mouse that was in front of me. As I gradually moved from one creature to the next, I learned about this world, until I finally came to inhabit the body of a human, the creature standing at the top of the food chain."
Swish.
The monster raised its eyes to look at me again. Though its voice was pitched low, it carried vividly through the darkness.
"I naturally looked into who I was and how I came to be born. But it was pointless. When I later learned that others like me existed, I asked them, and their answers were the same. The only thing we've learned—through human science, analyzing ourselves—is that the materials making up our bodies are not so different from a human's. Thanks to that, we can at least guess that we're not creatures from beyond the Earth. But whether we were made or born on this planet, and if we were made, by whom, or if we were born, how—none of us knows even now."
The monster's emotionless manner of speaking would have made it impossible for a third party to tell truth from lie, yet strangely, to me alone it didn't feel like a lie at all.
"Then… how did you all increase your numbers? You said you had kin, didn't you? That means there's some way of doing it, one way or another."
"I don't know."
"Huh?"
I was genuinely taken aback—I hadn't expected yet another 'I don't know.'
"At least, we don't know how to multiply ourselves. It's an unfortunate thing to say to a human, but if we did know, we might have long since swelled our numbers and taken your place at the top of this ecosystem. In terms of the superiority of our bodies alone, we possess abilities that surpass humans."
"I see… so you just appeared out of nowhere, the way you were born…?"
"I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I don't know. If I had to speculate, our total population on this Earth doesn't exceed the thousands. And the number of us who die far outpaces the number who ever appear."
On a global scale, that really didn't sound like very many at all.
But… wait a moment.
"They're dying? You mean they reach the end of their lifespan?"
"Lifespan is not a concept that applies to us. As long as there's a living creature we can parasitize, we never die of natural causes. The only times we die are when we take our own lives, or when someone kills us."
"Suicide… doesn't sound likely. So being killed—do you mean accidents? The kind of unexpected accident you run into living hidden inside human society?"
"No. There is a human organization that hunts us."
"What!?"
The existence of monsters was one thing, but I'd had no idea there were people who knew about them and killed them deliberately.
It was the kind of group that shows up as a staple of monster movies, but to me, in the real world, it was a story I could hardly wrap my head around.
Listening to all this, I also naturally understood why the monster had changed its diet—why it went out of its way to live on my semen instead of human flesh.
No matter how perfect the mimicry or the memory manipulation, eating humans inevitably left traces behind.
Especially in this day and age, when every corner of the world sits under surveillance.
"Uh… um, ha… I, I think I just heard something way… way heavier than I was ready for…"
Having lived an ordinary life only to be suddenly thrown into the middle of a movie plot, I was hit all over again with the reality that I had been caught up in something deeply abnormal.
Part of me also felt a little hurt that the monster hadn't told me any of this sooner.
…No, I never asked, so maybe there was no need for it to bring it up.
I hadn't told it everything about myself either—my family circumstances and all, small as they were.
Thinking of it that way, I even felt grateful that the monster had been honest with me instead of keeping it hidden.
"Hyun-ok."
The monster called out to me as I sat there confused and worried.
"I like you. Short as our time together has been, I believe something like what humans call affection has taken root. But now that you know the danger I carry with me, I won't blame you if you cast me aside."
"…So you're going to… kill me?"
The terror and dread I'd felt the first time I met the monster came creeping back.
It bore repeating: the being before me was, quite literally, a monster that could end my life whenever it pleased.
"If this were the day we first met, I honestly might have. But now I intend to end it with memory manipulation instead. You'll forget I exist and go on living the way you did before."
The monster still spoke in that low, even tone, but was it my imagination, or did its voice sound hollow?
"Haah…"
I let out a long sigh, shuffled away from the monster, flopped down onto the bed, and grabbed handfuls of my own hair.
My feelings were a tangled mess.
I had no idea what kind of organization killed monsters, but there was a very real chance the fallout would reach me too.
One way or another, I'd chosen to associate with the thing, and to speak bluntly—I'd been tacitly harboring it.
If that organization ever found out, at minimum some legal or social measure would certainly be taken against me, and in the worst case, I could even be killed.
I had grown attached to the monster in our short time together, and my feelings for it were deepening—but no matter how much I liked it, if it came down to staking my life, I hesitated.
"From what information I've gathered, they are a worldwide organization, but one that no government has ever officially recognized."
"So the governments don't know you exist?"
"The upper echelons probably do know. If they haven't made it public, it's likely to keep society from descending into chaos."
Come to think of it… if people started suspecting that my parents, or the friend sitting next to me, were actually monsters in disguise, it wouldn't be the kind of thing you could announce easily either.
Which meant, at the same time, that neither the governments nor that secret organization had yet found a reliable way to pick monsters out from among humans.
If they had, they'd have eradicated them long ago instead of keeping quiet.
"That's exactly what you're thinking."
The monster, having guessed what I was mulling over, went on.
"In any case, they are finding us and killing us faster than we can ever grow. …If that organization learns of me, and of my connection to you, you may cut me loose without hesitation. You can even say a monster blackmailed you. Deny my existence completely. Please do—for you are nothing more than a victim."
Told that, if it came to it, I should deny the monster's very existence, I stared at it blankly, my heart growing heavier still.
"Give me… some time to think… right now I… I don't know."
"Understood."
To my listless answer, the monster silently nodded, then turned its gaze away with a faintly gloomy expression.
I lay back down on the bed, but sleep wouldn't come easily.
Slither.
Just as I was drowning in a flood of stray thoughts, someone slipped under the covers and lay down beside me.
My eyes, now used to the dark, recognized her at once.
"I'm sorry for dragging you into all this, oppa."
Wearing Sung-ha's face, the monster turned toward me and spoke in her voice.
"Mmm… it's a lot."
Unable either to deny or affirm it, I fudged the moment with an ambiguous smile.
"Oppa… why don't you quit your job?"
"Huh?"
I blinked at the words out of nowhere.
"Construction is hard and dangerous. If you only work for the money, let me earn it. I've saved up quite a lot."
Sung-ha cradled my cheek gently in both hands as she said it, her voice tender.
I had no idea how much money she actually had, but it struck me that with Sung-ha's looks and abilities, money would come easily enough.
Crude as it was to say, even just streaming online with that face, she'd earn dozens of times what I made.
"Is this because… if I keep working, I might die? Which would cut off your meals? Or because it raises the odds of being found by that organization?"
Maybe it was the tangle in my head, but the words came out colder than even I expected.
Yet Sung-ha didn't look wounded in the least, answering evenly in the monster's flat tone.
"That's true. I won't deny it. But either way, I think there's more to gain if you quit. Or—are you getting some inner fulfillment from the work?"
Asked whether it was really about more than money, I thought it over, but no ready answer came.
"Well, there are people I get along with, but… it's true I don't especially like the work. It's dangerous, it's grueling… there's some satisfaction in building something with my own hands, but… it's not like I love it, exactly. For me, manual labor was just the daily routine of staying alive. …Hearing myself say it, I really don't have a reason to keep at it. I'm still young—I could quit and do something else."
Even as I spoke, what labor actually meant to me was coming into focus, hazy but real.
"Then let me earn the money. I'm a college student, but I can manage somehow. Don't worry about it."
Sung-ha smiled and said it so sweetly.
Thinking it over again—if the cost of living were solved, the reasons to quit genuinely outnumbered the reasons to stay.
"Okay."
"Thank you, oppa."
Peck.
Sung-ha kissed my cheek, beamed at me, then slid her eyes coyly down toward the foot of the blanket.
"…Shall we, oppa?"
That tiny point of contact—a single kiss—was enough to make me slowly stiffen, and Sung-ha, pressed close against me, felt it and asked first.
Before I could answer, she vanished from my sight and began to stir beneath the blanket.
"Nnh!?"
My waistband slipped away, and warmth engulfed me in the dark—and so, half against my will, the night began all over again.